Nas Academy’s revenue grows by 2x, but slips into the red in 2021

Updated (September 9, 2022, 3pm SGT): The headline of this story has been updated from “Nas Academy swings to a loss in 2021 despite doubling revenue”.

Nas Academy, the Singapore-based edtech platform of content creator firm Nas Daily, saw its revenue more than double to S$3.8 million (US$2.7 million) in 2021, according to its latest regulatory filings on Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA). Till recently, the company had only one source of revenue – the subscription fees of the courses it offers. It launched a new product called Nas.io last week, adding another revenue stream for the platform.

That said, the edtech firm swung to an operating loss of US$3.7 million in 2021 from a marginal profit of nearly US$300,000 a year earlier.

The Nas Academy team / Photo credit: Nas Academy

The company had hit a few road bumps during its journey in 2021 – its second year of operations – especially in the Philippines. In August of that year, Nas Academy had to take down a course after a relative of the lecturer alleged that there were no contracts signed. Shortly after, Louise De Guzman Mabulo, a Forbes 30 Under 30 listee in Asia, accused Nas Daily founder Nuseir Yassin of rude and exploitative behavior. Amid these controversies, the company temporarily halted its operations in the Philippines.

Nas Daily COO Alex Dwek tells Tech in Asia that these incidents in the Philippines didn’t have an impact on the business and that the platform actually saw higher growth following the events. He adds that Q4 was in fact “the firm’s best quarter of 2021.”

He says that the loss of US$3.7 million was due to the company expanding its staff and investing in technology after it received VC funding in order to grow the business.

Widening staff costs

In Nas Academy’s first year of operations, before it received funding, the edtech firm had very limited staff and had only launched two courses, shares Dwek. As the operation was small, they ran it profitably.

Nas Academy’s staff costs – which is its largest expense – jumped by over 10x year on year to US$2.8 million in 2021. The edtech firm currently has a headcount of about 100, which includes 75 full-time employees and around 25 contractors and course trainers across its offices in Singapore, Dubai, and the Philippines. This is from a workforce of about 20 people in 2020.

“We decided to take these few courses and turn it into a marketplace, which required building technology to host the marketplace. There’s a very big difference between running a course where you can host it on very limited technology versus investing in AWS and hiring engineers. That requires investment and so we went to investors,” explains Dwek. “This is essentially why we went from a bootstrapped small profitable company to trying to build a bigger company and scaling it through technology.”

See also: Nas Daily dreams of hiring 1,000 people for its grand edtech plans

Earlier this year in July, Nas Academy raised US$12 million from a clutch of investors including FTX and HOF Capital. Exactly a year prior, the company had raised US$11 million in series A money, its first round of funding.

The edtech platform’s investors include the likes of Lightspeed Ventures, 500 Global, and TechAviv Founder Partners. It also counts Patreon co-founder Jack Conte and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath among its backers.

Nas Daily is profitable