Fidu, an Argentinian startup that offers an operating system for schools, announced a $5M round in which Lightspeed Venture Partners, NFX, Imaginable Futures, and Broom Ventures participated. Several founders also participated as angel investors: Felipe Villamarin and Andrés Bilbao from Rappi, Roberto Souviron from Despegar, Fabian Gomez from Frubana, and Matías Woloski from Auth0.
The startup provides customized digital solutions for educators to digitally manage the school’s finances, announcements, and more. Nicolás Giménez, Caterina Carreño, and Ariel Manduca founded the company to solve the following problem:
“Most schools use inefficient (and mostly offline) administrative processes, which leads to school administrators spending +70% of their time in bureaucratic tasks instead of teaching,” Giménez explains.
Fidu’s debut product is an app through which private schools can send tuition and pay slips to parents, and through which parents can pay. Giménez explains that most schools in Latin America receive tuitions in cash. They also tend to keep the cash in the school before making the deposit.
According to Giménez, this is “not very safe for schools and families who need to move the cash around … high-income schools might accept additional payment options like wire transfer, but it’s still very limited.”
Fidu is also developing technology to help schools better understand how stable their revenue is. Once the technology and data are built, they look forward to offering revenue financing to schools.
The startup’s operating system is already being used by more than 1,000 schools in Latin America. By optimizing operational and financial processes for schools, and making sure they can set up the system in 48 hours, Fidu gives them more time for what really matters: educating.
