Technologies for capturing and managing large volumes of data, known as big data, are being applied to a multitude of business sectors. One of these is the education sector, which has seen approximately $150M from early 2013 to date from 30 companies.
Parchment: to assert your educational credentials
During this same month of January 2014, Parchment has received $35M from
The Raine Group, GSV Capital, Deborah Quazzo, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, Internet Capital Group and Salmon River Capital, accumulating a total of $54M since its first round in 2011.
Beyond providing a low-cost and efficient electronic transcript operation, Parchment works with students and institutions around the world to put value on education credential data - helping people collect, promote and share their education credentials easily and securely.
Bigdata for education still a long way to go
Despite the number of companies that have received funding to apply bigdata to the education sector, the outlook is very bright. "One sign of these good prospects is that 33% of the above-mentioned deals have been early stage and less than $1M deals. These companies can be expected to receive further rounds of funding in the coming years if they are able to demonstrate a good approach to the market" analyses Diego Gutierrez from Abra Invest.
An example of this is icreate which received a first round in February 2013. Icreate seeks to harness technology and the creative potential of existing students through intuitive, low-cost tools that increase retention and conceptual understanding in all content areas.
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