Formed in 2016 by Dimeji Falana, Edves offers an integrated management platform for schools. It also allows clients to manage the overall operational activities of schools.
The platform enables clients to manage student learning systems, student admission, fee payments, student performance, etc. Edves’s clients include American Christian Academy, Trove Schools, and Hansal International School, among others.
The needs of schools vary in curriculum and pedagogy, and the plan varies in learning objectives, therefore delivering last-mile education without a digital infrastructure reduces the ability of the teachers to deliver learning effectively.
With Edves, Parents, and Teachers can track and analyze Student journeys using data on learning objectives and assessments to meet the unique needs of the students.
In addition to learning management capabilities, its features include; School Fee Payment Collection (using USSD, Bank-to-Bank, and Card payment methods) and other critical administrative activities.
They started with a greedy focus on long games, with a heart filled with the genuine needs and wants of the market.
The initial priority was about cracking the market-fit status before anyone else could, and that was realized before reaching the 500th School in 2019.
Their culture promotes closeness to the market and customer obsession, and they have invested time and money in consumer insights, attraction, and satisfaction.
Also, the iterative feedback on product and pricing has led to a moat and unmatched value proposition in the market resulting in Edves being the most used Edtech in Nigeria in 2020 and 2021, (according to Semrush report).
The engineering strength deployed to build the system glued with the business model from the backend to the frontend, and that has been proven in position resilience, to meet the diverse demands of the schools.
Only Edves, at over 1200 Schools, allows customization per School with unique URL, School Fee Billing Schedule, Fees Collection, Lesson Notes, Color Theme, and Report Templates following the School specification.
The same software is powering the variations in market demands. There are hundreds of Schools running Nigerian, British, American, Baccalaureate, and Hybrid curricula on Edves, yet, the same engineering architecture permits them to achieve the objectives of digitizing the learning journey.
They are still on the journey, in the early days towards glory, so they press forward daily.
In Africa, it is assumed that there are over 500,000 K-12 schools, and over 75,000 are in Nigeria, while over 11,000 are in Lagos State Nigeria alone.
Today, they have only crossed 1,200 schools, so the journey is still in its early stages. The market size is currently at $15.4 billion with a CAGR of 36.5%.
To them, success means the state when African Schools and the Education System have been fully powered with the digital tool that will support the teachers to give a bespoke learning experience for every child, leveraging a unique data set on the academic journey of the child.
In 2030, Africa’s under-18 population (K-12 school-age) will increase by two-thirds, reaching almost 1 billion by mid-century; and close to half of the world population of children will be in Africa by the end of the 21st century.
An increase in this age-group population, coupled with the need to reduce costs of education, and teachers dependent on traditional classroom management, have led to high demand for digital-led operation and lesson instructions for efficiency, ability to educate a growing population, and improved delivery.
The population growth in Africa is increasing demands for basic education, and the currently struggling brick-and-mortar school systems will be stressed beyond capacity, hence the urgency in availing strong technology infrastructure to back education delivery and school administration, because the physical infrastructures are slow to build, rigid and costly to maintain.
Therefore, in response to this, Edves is the digital infrastructure, the operating system that is powering the learning and administration of schools and the education system.
The competition started with Pen-and-Paper, MS Excel, and a few players from outside the African continent, but in the contemporary days, we have seen new entries in various little segments.
Edves however innovate at the core of Education, ensuring efficiency in learning and administration in the entire journey of a learner.
They currently serve customers in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Cameroon through our staff and partners. Our ambition is Pan African, and we shall go into other markets as designed in our pathway.
How it Works
The platform also allows parents to view certain details about their children/wards as well as pay fees on the platform. Considering that not all parents are tech-savvy, these details can be accessed via text, email, an app, or the web platform itself.
As part of its digital infrastructure efforts, the company also enables interaction between teachers, parents, and administrators to deliver education and means of collaborating on learners’ progress on learning goals and track and analyze learning outcomes.
The platform is secured and encrypted through SSL (Secure Socket Layer). Our expert architecture. Hosted with Amazon, one of the biggest and most trusted hosting companies.
Your data is not stored on your system but in the cloud. So, if your system crashes it does not affect the data stored on EDVES.
Additionally, Edves is an academic portal that automates operations in schools and colleges from admission to transcript generation.
The platform reduces the load on teachers and administrators by allowing them to use AI algorithms to track attendance and plan classroom lessons.
Founders
Dimeji Falana
Dimeji Falana is the CEO and co-founder of Edves, an ed-tech entrepreneur and a full-stack software engineer with over a decade of experience in software development for banks, universities, and governments.
He holds a B.Sc in Computer Science and an MBA in Business Administration from the University of Chester, United Kingdom.
He also volunteered as a software developer trainer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s 2011 AITI Summer Program and has traveled to over 25 countries in North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, speaking and attending startup business accelerators, and tech conferences on education technology and Startup Growth programs.
After winning the 2018 Seedstars Global Edtech Prize in Switzerland, he became a Fellow of Jacobs Foundation in Switzerland and a 2018 Seedstars alumnus.
In 2019, he also became a Fellow of the Westerwelle Foundation in Berlin Germany, and a MindCET Go alumnus in Tel Aviv Israel.
In 2020, he became a business and political delegate of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung to the German Bundestag in Berlin, and in 2021, and became a delegate of the Africa-France Business Summit in Paris, France.
In 2022, he was endorsed by Technation as Global Talent in the Leadership category, and in the same year, he was invited by ASU-GSV to speak at the global Edtech event in San Diego, USA.
Additionally, he was a mentor at the 2019 Facebook Accelerator Programme Lagos and a volunteer faculty member of Tekedia Mini MBA in 2020 and 2023, Edves won the Best Edtech company in Nigeria, and the same year he volunteered as an entrepreneur trainer for Global Vision Initiative in the United Kingdom and Pakistan.
Investors & Funding Rounds
Launch Africa, Beta. Ventures, Future Africa
Edves has received a seed funding round of USD 575 K to help it develop its product and bring more schools online.
The round was led by Beta. Ventures, and also featured Launch Africa Ventures, Chinook Capital, and Future Africa.
Edves plans to use the investment to fuel product improvement, and release new offerings to address fresh consumer needs in the Nigerian market and major segments in other African markets.
Main Competitors
Yellowdig: This is an online learning experience driven by peer collaboration, gamification, and data science.
AEFIS: It is the complete solution for the assessment of learning and continuous improvement on your campus.
ApprenNet: It provides web and mobile platforms to enable practice-based learning for both soft skills and hands-on technical training.
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