Businessmen Horia Manda and Valentin Tăbuș lead this round and become shareholders in the company, following an investment of 550,000 euros
Brio®, the ed-tech platform for measuring educational performance, reaches a value of 5.5 million euros (post-money evaluation) and announces the opening of a new round of investments through SeedBlink. The company thus reaches double value compared to September 2020, when it carried out the first financing campaign on the same crowdinvesting platform.
This new round of investments was led by businessmen Horia Manda and Valentin Tăbuș, partners in AXXESS Capital, who invested 550,000 euros, the two thus becoming shareholders of Brio®.
The two investors are joined by a new round of financing open on SeedBlink, of 250,000 euros. The members of Brio Syndicate (the SPV constituted as a result of the previous listing on the platform), who already hold the quality of shareholder, exercised their right of preemption to investments a priori to the opening of the public offer. Thus, after exercising this right, the value available for the public offer is 150,000 euros.
“Less than a year and a half away from our first campaign on SeedBlink, Brio® has grown at an accelerated pace and we have managed to do things that are significant for education in Romania, many for the first time, including: the first digital Olympics of mathematics, national literacy and digital literacy tests, history tests and the first integrated training program for teachers in Romania in the use of digital platforms. We still have important plans for our development and expansion, and the fact that we are now announcing a new round of investments is a confirmation of our successful path and a proof of investor confidence in our product,” says Dragoș Iliescu (photo), CEO, Chief Scientist and founder of Brio®.
The company’s representatives say that the corresponding funding for this round will be intended, firstly, to consolidate the product on the Romanian market, by developing a SaaS platform that will fully cover the testing and evaluation needs of any educational institution and, secondly, the development and the external launch of the test learning product that Brio® develops using programmatic item generation algorithms and Artificial Intelligence.
“Two factors convince me to invest in a business: the quality of the group of people behind the product (this is the essential condition), and the real growth prospects of the business. In addition, in the specific case of Brio® we saw – in addition to the immediate impact in the digital transformation of education in Romania, through scientific premises, aligned with the times we live in – the potential international application of intellectual property generated,” says Horia Manda, investor.
In September 2020, Brio® launched for the first time a round of financing on the investment platform in European technology startups SeedBlink, when it managed to exceed the initial target proposed before the end of the campaign and raise 285,000 euros.
“Brio® stands out for its strong leadership, financial results and potential market opportunities. Commitment to their users and the educational goal with social impact is a source of inspiration. The evolution of the company is supported by a truly differentiated platform, based on cognitive psychology, well aligned with the basic curriculum for grades I-XII. We are delighted with the validation of the investors leading this round, Horia Manda and Valentin Tăbuș, and with the fact that we once again support the evolution plans of Brio® through our community of investors,” said Andrei Dudoiu, Managing Partner at SeedBlink.
Approved by the Ministry of Education and Research, the Brio® Testing System is designed based on the Romanian curriculum. The Brio® platform offers tests in Mathematics, Romanian Language and History, but also in Literacy (functional literacy) and Digital Literacy and is currently used by over 100,000 users and registers over 3,000 active subscriptions and hundreds of thousands of tests.
About BRIO
Brio® is the first and only standardized digital testing platform for Romanian students. Through Brio® school tests, Romanian students in grades I-XII can objectively assess their knowledge in the main school subjects and can improve their performance in exams. Standardized tests are developed on the basis of scientific principles of measurement (the branch of science that deals with it is called psychometry), so that the questions, scoring and interpretation procedures are the same for all people who pass the test. They use complex statistical methods to respect the principles of fidelity and validity, ie accuracy (no error) and adequacy (correctness, coverage of the targeted conceptual territory). Therefore, they are much more rigorous than the tests developed ad-hoc. The score of a standardized test is not subject to subjectivity, it is not dependent on the meekness or severity of the evaluator or on the lightness or difficulty of the questions.
After each test, the student and the parent or teacher receive an evaluation report – the Brio® Report – a detailed document that breaks down in very clear terms the aspects from the analyzed subchapters, indicating which notions are already mastered by the student, respectively those that are needed. deepening. An objective and actionable guidance and information tool, it is the only tool on the Romanian digital education market that supports sustained training and performance, accurately identifying the areas where the student must work to be competitive with his peers.
Brio® is approved by the Ministry of Education and Research, the Testing System being a scientific product designed based on the Romanian school curriculum, conceptualized by a team of international teachers and experts in testing and psychometry.
About SeedBlink
SeedBlink is the largest equity crowdfunding platform in Southeast Europe, both in terms of amounts traded and the number of investors, offering those interested a simple way to invest in innovative startups. The favorite candidates listed on SeedBlink are innovative start-ups with proven traction, with an already tested MVP, ethical and with a clear, articulated business model, with development potential in both the local and international markets.
