Finnish edtech startup Kide Science raises €1m bridge round to accelerate  growth

Finnish edtech startup Kide Science raises €1m bridge round to accelerate growth

Published: 08-08-2022 11:09:00 | By: Pie Kamau | hits: 3201 | Tags:

Finnish edtech startup Kide Science announced it has raised €1 million, to support their new and exciting bid to expand from primarily science education, into all early years subjects. 

The financing round was led by Sparkmind Fund, in syndication with Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment Ltd) and also included an R&D loan from Business Finland. This significant investment will take the company’s total seed funding to €3.2m since launching in December 2017.

Kide Science has already transformed the way over a million children, parents and teachers learn together through stories and play. The company’s aim has always been to motivate children to learn how the world around them works, whilst also striving to ease a busy teacher’s life with ready-made lesson plans based upon a child’s sense of wonder. Now Kide Science wants to do more. With this funding, and under the simplified logo ‘Kide,’ the company will be developing more holistic activities to suit all different learning areas.

Jenni Vartiainen, Co-founder, Kide Science: “Our research and feedback from customers shows that a child’s imagination can help learning in more areas than just science – there’s really compelling evidence that shows hands-on learning through stories and play is effective in all areas: we’ve seen it help develop skills in maths, language, social emotional learning and social studies. It’s incredible, really.” 

This big foray into a more expanded field has already started with a bang - Kide have forged a partnership with DreamWorks’ Gabby’s Dollhouse.  A wide range of lesson plans and activities have been created; to be used in tandem with the hit Netflix show. These are available now on Kide’s teacher platform.

The new investment will also focus on accelerating Kide’s growth in the US - enabling Kide to pursue new US partnerships and explore key international homeschooling markets. In addition, a senior UX designer and Head of Product will be hired who will develop the current product into a more streamlined, yet enhanced user experience. 

Closer to home, in June 2022 Kide Science won the First Education Finland Award as the best learning solution for international markets. Consideration was given to the impact, innovativeness and scalability of the solution; the pedagogical quality and background of the solution, as well as the technical quality, accessibility and support a company provides.

The jury also paid attention to the business model and its ethical sustainability, "Kide Science is an inspiring solution that sparks the desire to learn and experiment. It provides insights and a joy of learning and appeals to a wide audience. The jury sees the solution's massive potential to be an impressive, significant, and even world-changing solution."

The jury consisted of Tuomo Puumala from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, Minna Kelhä from the Finnish National Agency for Education, Aija Bärlund from FIBAN, Mika Ihamuotila from Marimekko, Lenita Toivakka from Chamber of Commerce as well as Jarmo Viteli from the University of Tampere.

www.kidescience.com