Preply: A global marketplace for tutoring

Preply helps to find the best tutor for improving foreign languages and a range of other subjects

How does it work?

Preply is a global online marketplace for tutoring. Students can find tutors for over 60 subjects, most of which are foreign languages. Upon registration, students can search for tutors by price, availability, nationality, and language, also they get access to a tutor’s calendar to choose the best time for a lesson. 

The platform uses machine learning to rank the tutors based on their profiles. 

The marketplace is also very convenient for tutors – they do not need to do marketing as they can find students on the platform. They just need to register, fill out the profile and make a short video about the resources they use during a lesson. It is up to teachers to decide the price per lesson and it varies from 2 to 100 USD and the platform charges a small commission from each lesson.

Preply has its native software for video calls called Preply Space, however, both students and teachers are free to choose the communication channel.

It is also important to mention that the Preply team consists of more than 15 nationalities and all the employees have access to language lessons on the platform.

Success story

The marketplace was founded in 2012 by Kirill Bigai, Dmytro Voloshyn and Serge Lukyanov. The startup initially focused on Ukrainian, Russian, Belorussian and Kazakhstan markets. Preply received 175 000 $ from Vostok Ventures and a couple of business angels followed by a 120 000 $ investment from TechStars Berlin which allowed it to expand to the Polish market.

In 2016 Preply expanded to the Brazilian market and after closing another round of 1.3 million, the startup announced an expansion to UK, Germany, and Spain.

In 2018 the startup raised a 4 million round from 7 different investors led by Point Nine Capital. The funds will be used to add a couple more technical features to the product, such as Preply Calendar as well as opening new offices in Europe.

The Preply website is translated into 15 languages and at the moment it has over 10 000 tutors and 100 000 students from 160 countries.

About this Show Case

Type Scale-up
City Kyiv
Topics Education, Tutoring Marketplaces, Online Marketplaces

Contact

personKirill Bigai - CEO
contactshttps://www.linkedin.com/company/preplycom/about/
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