The archive · Education & Work · Product decision · 2019–2021
uLesson bet SD-card lessons crack African edtech; 2M downloads, $15M Series B
Nigeria's uLesson bet low-bandwidth video lessons would win African edtech; by Dec 2021 it had 2M downloads and the continent's largest disclosed edtech round.
uLesson
What the business is
uLesson is a Nigerian edtech company selling a K-12 learning app: pre-recorded video lessons shipped on SD cards for offline use, plus quizzes, homework help and live classes, priced by subscription.
Starting capital：$3.1M seed (Nov 2019); $7.5M Series A led by Owl Ventures (Jan 2021); $15M Series B with Tencent and Nielsen Ventures (Dec 2021)
How it started
Sim Shagaya, who had founded Nigerian e-commerce ventures DealDey and Konga, founded uLesson in 2019 after a $3.1M seed; the app launched just weeks before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, when the ground for remote learning 'became wet in a way we didn't see before' (TechCrunch).
What happened
The pandemic made remote learning urgent across Africa: by Jan 2021 the app passed 1M downloads with 70% MoM growth, and Owl Ventures led a $7.5M Series A to fund live tutoring. uLesson added quizzes, homework help and one-to-many live classes, and by Dec 2021 — with 2M downloads, 25.6M questions answered and paying users up 600% — Tencent and Nielsen Ventures led a $15M Series B, the largest disclosed African edtech investment at the time. A kids-coding experiment (DevKids) that once made 30% of revenue was rolled back, while schools became the biggest channel: half of subscribers used uLesson in school and Nigeria supplied 85% of paying users.
How it ended up
Still running: uLesson's site was live as of 2026-09-02 and the company continued operating and expanding after the December 2021 Series B.
Background
uLesson is a Nigerian edtech company founded by serial entrepreneur Sim Shagaya in 2019, selling a K-12 learning app with pre-recorded video lessons, quizzes and live classes for students across Africa. Its founding bet was distribution: content shipped on SD cards and dongles so students with entry-level Android phones and patchy data could learn offline, with an annual subscription around $50 (TechCrunch).
uLesson launched weeks before COVID-19 closed African schools, and the pandemic turned its offline-first model into a growth engine: 70% month-over-month growth, 1M+ app downloads and 3,000 questions a day during a live-tutoring test by January 2021, when Owl Ventures led a $7.5M Series A. In December 2021, Tencent, Nielsen Ventures and existing backers put in $15M — then the largest disclosed investment in an African edtech startup — with the app at 2M downloads, 25.6M questions answered and paying users up 600% (TechCrunch).
The company layered quizzes, homework help and one-to-many live classes onto the core app, and tested then rolled back DevKids, a kids-coding product that once made 30% of revenue. Schools became a major channel — half of subscribers used uLesson in school, Nigeria supplied 85% of paying users, and 180 field agents sold into Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Ghana (TechCrunch).
What has to be true
- uLesson is Nigeria's clearest bet that offline distribution, not content, wins African edtech — SD cards were the product thesis.
- The COVID-19 shock tested the bet immediately: schools closed weeks after launch and remote demand became the growth engine (70% MoM growth, 1M+ downloads).
- Its funding trail is unusually complete and dated — $3.1M seed (2019), $7.5M Series A (Jan 2021), $15M Series B (Dec 2021) — each documented by TechCrunch.
- The 2021 experiments (DevKids, live classes, offline centers) show a founder deliberately iterating the business model rather than repeating a format that worked elsewhere.
What can be applied
In low-bandwidth markets the delivery format is the product: SD cards won uLesson its first million downloads, and live tutoring became the upsell — content alone does not move African edtech.
Aftermath
As of the 2026-09-02 site check, uLesson still operates as a K-12 learning app for primary, junior-secondary and senior-secondary students; the hard numbers above come from the December 2021 Series B announcement (2M downloads, 25.6M questions answered, 12.3M videos watched, 600% paying-user growth). Its earlier seed and Series A of $3.1M (Nov 2019) and $7.5M (Jan 2021) are documented by TechCrunch.
Sources
- African edtech startup uLesson lands a $7.5 million Series A
- African edtech startup uLesson raises $15M, backed by Nielsen Ventures and Tencent
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