Gojimo supports students’ learning by providing resources to prepare for exams at any time or place. Gojimo is available on iOS, Android and the web and offers over 50,000 free, curriculum-specific assessment items to 250,000 monthly active users. Premium content from major educational publishers, such as McGraw-Hill Education and Oxford University Press, is also available as in-app purchases.
Gojimo, backed by Index Ventures and JamJar Investments (Innocent Drinks founders), differentiates itself with its consumer centric, design-focused, mobile-first platform, which offers over 50,000 high quality, curriculum-specific assessment items for all major UK exams and an increasing number of US and South African qualifications.
Students love the Gojimo app as indicated by the app’s 4 star rating in the App Store and Google Play (as of 6th May 2015).
The Gojimo app was released in beta in January 2014, came out of beta in December 2014 and is attracting over 250,000 monthly active users in the current exam season (April-June). Additionally, the Company’s existing app portfolio of 15+ apps is being updated and integrated to run off the Gojimo Platform, creating the Gojimo Network. Together, these legacy apps in addition to the new Gojimo platform, have been downloaded over 800,000 times.[2]
Globally, the exam preparation and tutoring market is estimated to be worth $100 billion by 2017[3], and mobile delivery is believed to pave the way of the future. Students around the world are crying out for exam preparation resources on their devices, 90%[4] of students believe that tablets make learning more fun and 82%[5] believe they lead to improvements in their performance. Gojimo aims to be the number one digital exam preparation brand in the world andis well-positioned to do so, having adopted a future-proof, mobile-first strategy that capitalizes on students’ transition from web-based to mobile technology.
Longer term, a personalised and adaptive exam preparation experience is planned, driven by Gojimo’s proprietary data capture architecture. The aim is for students to receive tests which focus on their weaknesses and for them to be directed to specific resources which can assist them and support their learning journey. These features, along with a social and competitive feature, are expected in 2016.
[2] Appfigures.com. Numbers verified by CrowdBnk
[3] GSV Education Sector Factbook 2012 – http://gsvadvisors.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/GSV-EDU-Factbook-Apr-13-2012.pdf, page 1
[4] Pearson Student Mobile Device Survey 2013 – https://www.pearsoned.com/wp-content/uploads/Pearson-Student-Mobile-Device-Survey-2013-National-Report-on-Grades-4-to-12-public-release.pdf, page 9
[5] Ibid
Gojimo is looking to raise between £500,882 and £1,252,206 as an EIS-eligible equity round in order to continue its rapid expansion. The purpose of this round is to fund the company over the next twelve months, at which point it will raise a series A round. During this time, as well as funding the ongoing development and growth of the business, the product is planned to be updated to include a social and competitive feature for students, and the team will be expanded to include two additional engineers and possibly a growth hacker.
Investors investing amounts less than £50,000 will hold their shares in a nominee account. These Ordinary Shares will have no pre-emption rights, meaning that new shares can be issued by the Company with no obligation on Gojimo to offer these shares to nominee account investors.
Contingent upon a successful fundraise and implementation of the business plan, it is expected that Gojimo will eventually be acquired by another company interested in the mobile exam preparation space. This is most likely to be an educational publisher, possibly one of the Company’s existing partners such as Oxford University Press or McGraw-Hill Education. Alternatively, this might be a media or technology company interested in moving into the education space. Management sees Apple, Microsoft and News Corp all as potential suitors in this space.
Examples of previous acquisitions in the exam preparation space include PrepMe, acquired by Hobsons, and Grockit, acquired by Kaplan. Both were bought for undisclosed sums. Grockit claims to have 330,000 users on the home page of its website and covers a limited number of high school and graduate exams in the US market, and one Indian exam. PrepMe only offers test prep for two US high school exams.