Malaysian edtech firm bags $2m from YC, 500 Global

Pandai, a Malaysia-based education technology firm, has raised a little over US$2 million in its pre-seed and seed rounds, which saw participation from Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, and 500 Global.

(From left) Pandai founders Mohd Suhaimi Ramly, Mohd Akmal Akhpah, and Khairul Anwar Mohamad Zaki / Photo credit: Pandai

Founded in January 2020, Pandai is an education app that helps K-12 students improve their academic performance. Recently, the startup launched modules that would allow parents to monitor their child’s activities and let teachers tap into the firm’s question bank.

The company’s offering was launched amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped it onboard users quickly. The app now has over 30,000 monthly active users.

Pandai began as a free service before it rolled out its paid feature at the beginning of 2021. However, despite the number of paid users increasing by 25% every month, the company said the feature is not its focus right now.

“We still want to improve the stickiness of our app and prolong the time that users spend in the app,” Khairul Anwar Mohamad Zaki, the company’s chief executive, told Tech in Asia.

To date, users spend around 57 minutes a day on the app, and the company wants to push that number to 90 minutes and boost its monthly active users as well.

See also: The key players in Southeast Asia’s growing edtech scene

Zaki founded Pandai along with his friends Mohd Suhaimi Ramly and Mohd Akmal Akhpah. The three graduated from universities in the US and have run a traditional education business together since 2008, though the trio now focus their efforts on Pandai.

Before bagging its most recent investment, Pandai became the first Malaysian edtech startup that was accepted in the Y Combinator accelerator program.

The company plans to use the fresh funds to acquire more customers in Malaysia and improve the technology and content side of its product. It currently has around 37 employees spread out between its technology and content divisions.

Other investors in this round include:

• Soma Capital
• Harvard Management Company
• RHL Ventures
• Falnas Capital
• Kembara Kapital