Lingawa to encourage learning of languages online
18th November, 2024
Lingawa, a Techstars-backed edtech startup, has made a major switch from academic tutoring to language learning. The company, now rebranded as Lingawa from TopSet, aims to help people learn and master their native languages, starting with Yoruba and Igbo.
To support this new direction, Lingawa has secured $1.1 million in pre-seed funding. Zrosk, Voltron Capital, Weav Capital, Kaleo Ventures, MasterCard Foundation, and Angels like Guy Futi, and Dolapo Adejuyigbe led the round. The funds will be used to develop an interactive language learning app, expand into newer languages, and invest in more talent and development.
Lingawa, formerly TopSet, was founded in 2022 by Frank Williams, Yvonne Williams and Uche Azinge. It was originally an edtech startup created to help K-12 students improve by two letter grades from D’s to B’s or C’s to A’s, within a term.
In June 2023, the Edtech company began to tweak its thesis and delved into teacher training to hack the learning system. The result of this tweak was a language learning problem, which later became the ground for Lingawa’s new direction.
“I really wanted to learn the language but when I tried to speak with family and friends, they made fun of me. But I realised other people experienced this too, not just Africans.”
The global language learning market is projected to reach $190 billion in five years, while Williams believes there is a $45 billion addressable market for frontier market language learning alone.
This process led to a call for teachers but Williams soon discovered that finding a high volume of African language tutors could be complex. The company has opened up the supply side by upskilling native speakers and providing a detailed five-level curriculum for them to follow to teach paying online learners.
Lingawa would consider a slightly different approach to its business model. It will cater to the diaspora market where Williams believes 20 million Africans exist, but half of them do not speak their mother tongue. By targeting the diaspora market, the company can potentially generate substantial revenue in foreign currency, mitigating the impact of currency devaluation and economic instability in Nigeria.
Since the switch, it has taught over 3,000 learners and now has 100 tutors. Tutors are native speakers residing in Africa. However, Frank shares that there is a skills gap the startup must fill before they are ready to become tutors.
“We realised fairly early on that there’s a bit of a skills gap when it comes to language teaching. What we do is find high-potential native speakers of African languages and train them to become world-class language teachers, which involves soft skill training, learning science training, and basically making sure that students are carried along in the lesson and that the lessons are delivered in a fun and engaging way.”
The Edtech company has an ambitious plan to develop an African language learning AI model, reach a million learners in the long term and house 100,000 tutors. Additionally, it will launch more languages like Swahili, Zulu, Arabic in 2025. With cash injection from new backers, there is optimism on the horizon.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) predicts that 40% of the world’s languages are at risk of extinction, with African languages making up a significant portion. Africa is home to over over 2,000 languages, but roughly 12% of these languages are at risk of extinction. With this funding, Lingawa’s mission to save African languages has begun.
