Geniebook tops the class with 100% revenue growth in 2021

The edtech sector, once a beneficiary of pandemic-driven school closures, is looking grim in the face of a funding slowdown.

In India, more than 10 edtech startups – including Byju’s, Unacademy, and Vendantu – have fired hundreds of employees in recent months. Those in Southeast Asia haven’t been spared.

Team Singapore at Geniebook / Photo credit: Geniebook

Amid massive layoffs, insolvency, and cash crunches in the industry as a whole, Geniebook, an edtech firm based in Singapore, stands out with a 100% revenue growth last year.

Geniebook co-founder Neo Zhizhong believes the shift toward online learning is “irreversible,” he tells Tech in Asia in a virtual tete-a-tete.

More than 90% of students, he adds, have not experienced “true edtech in the right sense,” which he believes combines both online and offline learning, including a live interaction component.

Like many edtech firms, Geniebook saw the number of overseas registered users surge about 1,000% amid the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. Between 2020 and 2022, the firm’s user base has gone up from 50,000 to 250,000, and that figure is “still growing” even as most schools reopen, Neo says.

The company has also managed to do this with relatively little funding compared to its peers – with nearly US$18 million raised to date.

While the East Ventures-backed firm is present in Vietnam and Malaysia – and has students from 17 countries including Indonesia on its platform – it was the startup’s home market of Singapore that drove its revenue growth last year. The company saw a strong demand from grade one to grade 10 pupils (ages seven to 16) in the city-state.

Neo credits this to its “cash-efficient” and “prudent” approach to growth. The company became profitable in 2020 and has been cash flow positive since 2021.

Last year, though, the firm turned to losses as it doubled down on employee benefits expenses, according to data from VentureCap Insights. “If you take out the non-cash items, we were profitable at the EBITDA level even in 2021,” Neo says.

The winning formula

Geniebook, which provides personalized online learning tools for primary and secondary school students across Chinese, English, Mathematics, and Science subjects, has come a long way. Just four years ago, cash flow issues had threatened to sink the entire business.

See also: Cash flow issues forced Geniebook to take its product public. Now it’s profitable and expanding

Scaling sustainably