The Series C round was led by Silicon Valley based Owl Ventures, the largest Education Technology investor in the world. Previous investors Diligent Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Educapital, Evli Growth Partners, Przemyslaw Gacek, co-founder of Grupa Pracuj also participated, as well as new investors such as Swisscom Ventures, and Orbit Capital. 

Preply’s Growth and the Market Trajectory

The Preply marketplace pairs hundreds of thousands of learners with more than 32,000 tutors teaching over 50 languages. Over the past year, Preply has tripled the size of its B2B language learning business which now counts Bytedance (Tiktok), Mercedes and McKinsey amongst its customers. 

On the consumer side, the number of people using the Preply app has grown 4x over the last two years and in many geographies overall users have almost doubled year on year. The number of students being taught on the platform now exceeds the number of students taught in Ivy League universities as the platform plans to conquer the growing online language learning market, set to reach $47bn by 2025. 

Kirill Bigai, Co-founder and CEO of Preply, said: “I am indescribably proud of what the Preply team has achieved. We have become the world's leading brand in live language classes and the platform of choice for so many tutors who have decided to teach online. With the additional funding, we plan to continue growing our footprint in the US and Europe by doubling down on AI-based matching and delivering on our promise to connect the largest live language learning community in the world.” 

Ross Darwin, Principal at Owl Ventures added: “We’re thrilled to partner with Preply on their next phase of growth. We're particularly excited by the continued momentum of the consumer business as well as its new language learning offering for companies, increasingly reliant on international workforces.”

Supporting Ukraine 

Though Preply’s main offices are in the U.S. & Europe,  the founders hail from Kyiv.  Over the last few months, the company’s global workforce have launched a number of meaningful initiatives to support Ukraine. This includes a ‘Messages to Ukraine’ campaign, translating over 8,000 global messages of support into Ukrainian, as well as a free language assistance program for 1,000 Ukrainians crossing borders and grappling with a new language.

A Snapshot of UK Trends

The UK is Preply's biggest market in Europe and the country of birth of an important share of English language tutors, which is the most studied subject on Preply.

• 23% of UK Preply learners are studying English, followed by Spanish (18%), French (10%), Arabic and Italian. 
• English is among the top languages studied in the UK due to relocators, expats, and foreign students living in-country
• The top three reasons British learners are using the platform are to improve their conversation skills (41%), for professional reasons (19%), and for their children (11%)
• Within Preply’s global community of tutors, the UK is the second most represented country of birth. While many tutors were born in the UK, 46% of those are now earning their Preply living teaching from a different country, with Spain, Thailand, Italy, France, and South Africa being popular places of residence.160 countries are currently studying with a British tutor on Preply.
• One English language tutor from the UK taught 602 different students on Preply in 2021