LatamList – UBITS, a Y Combinator-backed corporate training startup, raised a $5M Series A round led by Owl Ventures, the largest VC fund focused on education. Other investors included Sergio Monsalve, a board member at Udemy, as well as Salkantay Ventures and Amador Holdings.
“We were very impressed with the fast growth of UBITS, as well as the massive market opportunity ahead of them. The UBITS team has managed to make training more engaging and accessible, helping their customers drive better business outcomes,” said Ross Darwin, Principal at Owl Ventures, who will serve on the company’s Board of Directors.
UBITS is Owl Venture’s first investment in Latin America.
The edtech platform seeks to democratize education in Latin America by closing the skills gap for professionals through the delivery of short and practical content that can range in topics from leadership to sales and technology.
“This investment will be used to become the largest Spanish-speaking corporate training platform. This includes expanding into new markets such as Chile, Central America and Spain and consolidating in existing markets. Furthermore, we will double our course catalog to over 800 and develop new technology to provide greater value to our customers,” added Julián Melo, CEO and co-founder of UBITS.
UBITS partners with top executives and experts in the region to create content and through a bit-sized learning approach, provides a personalized learning experience for each person according to their job role, experience, and profile.
Additionally, companies are able to analyze employee learning metrics including completion rates, employee rankings, and most viewed courses to make key decisions about their workforce.
UBITS’ business model works under an annual subscription model per user, that companies pay to give their employees unlimited access to more than 500 courses and programs in Spanish.
Despite the pandemic, UBITS hit many milestones during 2020. In terms of performance, the company grew more than 3x in revenue and currently works with more than 170 companies in 10 countries in the region. These efforts drew the attention of the Stanford Impact Fund, which joined as an investor last year. And earlier in 2021, UBITS also announced an alliance with Coursera, becoming the first Coursera industry partner in Latin America.
