Kidato, a Nairobi-based online school for K-12 kids with a vision to provide a high-quality, affordable education to the growing middle class in Africa has been accepted into YC Winter 2021 Batch.
Kidato will receive $125,000 funding to shape the face of education for 100,000+ students in Kenya and across the continent by exploring learning that is aligned to preparing children for real-life experiences and not just exams.
“We are thrilled to announce our acceptance and funding by Y Combinator in the Winter 2021 batch,” announced Kidato, adding it firmly believes the future of Africa is dependent on what kids are being taught in this generation.
Kidato, Swahili for a class, grade or form, is a Nailab-incubated company and is the second Nailab-company to join the prestigious program after Kuhustle. Nailab was co-founded by Sam Gichuru, who is the brains behind both Kuhustle and Kidato.
“Parents in Africa face either public schools with student-teacher ratios as high as 50:1 or private schools with tuition fees as high as $7500 per year, per child. Kidato classes have student-teacher ratios of 5:1 and teach the same rigorous international curriculum as other private schools — but at a fraction of the price,” announced the company.
In its second semester, Kidato has enrolled more than 30 students into its learning-from-home program as a replacement for brick-and-mortar schools. Kidato expects to triple this enrollment by its third semester.
Kidato currently has over 32 tutors and has received over 500 applications in the last six months. As a private tutor at Kidato, they not only work less hours compared to brick and mortar schools but also earn more.
Additional to the academic classes, Kidato has integrated skill-based, after-school classes and has opened them to the public, with over 400 students registered and 200 students from 8 countries enrolled into different classes, such as coding, chess, languages, art and music. The platform also offers social activities like sports and educational field trips.
“Y Combinator has helped us shape our mission, introduced us to an amazing community of founders globally and encouraged us to build a product that our parents and students want and love,” announced Kidato. ” We are privileged to have worked with amazing people on this journey: our YC Partners: Jared, Tim, Surbhi.”
Silicon Valley-based YC is a startup fund and program founded in 2005. YC has invested in nearly 3,000 companies including Airbnb, DoorDash, Stripe, Instacart, Dropbox, and Coinbase. The combined valuation of YC companies is over $300B. YC has programs and resources that support founders throughout the life of their company.