Australian startup future-proofing your skills raises $1.7m to expand to Singapore

Photo credit: kasto / 123RF.

Sydney-based education startup Academy Xi announced today it raised US$1.7 million in a series A round. The round is led by Australia-based investors Perle Ventures and Alium Capital.

Academy Xi teaches courses in design and new technologies, including user experience, virtual reality, and augmented reality. It currently focuses on working with companies to train employees. Ultimately, the startup hopes to be a place for lifetime learning, enabling people to keep their skills current in the digital economy.

Co-founders Ben Wong and Charbel Zeaiter met at a “startup 101” event organized by the City of Sydney in 2015 and appreciated each other’s presentations. Realizing they were both passionate about the changing face of education, they decided to put together a community aiming to teach these new digital skills.

“We explored how we could not only make a successful global company, but more importantly how we could use the network, content, and community to create sustainable education for those who were not able to afford the tuition in countries or regions of the underprivileged,” Wong tells Tech in Asia. “We focused on emerging skills and high demand areas to future proof people for the technological wave ahead,” he adds.

According to Wong, the funding will be used to “drive talent development into the corporate and startup ecosystems” in Sydney and Melbourne. It will also help set up the company’s entry into its third Australian city, Brisbane, and its first market abroad, Singapore.

“We’ve already completed some corporate training for companies in Singapore, and will continue to build training partnerships and run workshops, but will look to expand there officially in 2018,” he says. “Singapore is a big market for us, as the country has one of the most progressive governments when it comes to supporting further education and innovation.”

The city-state’s digital skill shortage is also a major draw for Academy Xi, which thinks it can be part of the solution. “Once we’ve established ourselves in Singapore we will look to expand throughout Asia-Pacific,” Wong adds.

The startup hopes to be a place for lifetime learning.

The founders hope to have 1,300 people fully skilled in the next 12 months and teach around 8,500 students in shorter classes and workshops. By 2020, it hopes to raise that number to 200,000 people.

“We’ve had doctors create medical VR startups, growth marketing students driving interest for their AI fashion advice robots, to students landing their dream job and beginning their UX careers,” Zeaiter says in a statement.

Academy Xi has over 20 corporate clients, which include companies like PwC, UNICEF, and Lendlease. Through its relationship with Perle Ventures, it’s also established a partnership with global seed fund Spark Labs, which should see the startup offering training to some of the fund’s portfolio companies.

The startup previously raised a seed round worth US$190,000 from innovation consultancy Vivant and Annie Parker, CEO of startup builder Lighthouse and chair of children’s digital school Code Club Australia. Parker was also part of the founding team of Telstra-backed accelerator Muru-D.

As it scales up, Academy Xi will have to compete against international education-focused companies that cover similar ground, like General Assembly. “It’s a wonderful comparison as their global growth has been impressive to watch,” Wong says, although he notes it’s only applicable when it comes to their UX courses.