Avolta acted as sole financial advisor to Educlever group on its sale to Editis – part of the Vivendi group. Avolta Partners is proud of Educlever’s renewed trust after advising the company on its Series A in 2016.
Educlever is a pioneering French EdTech in the digital education and training markets for learners, teachers and trainers. Listed as one of the 500 artificial intelligence French nuggets by France Digitale, the Educlever group’s services include platforms such as Maxicours, Enseigno, Orthodidacte or Le Robert Certification. The company relies on strong expertise in adaptive learning, an innovative technology using artificial intelligence to build personalized learning paths.
Editis, a leading French publishing group and subsidiary of Vivendi, is strengthening its ambition to become a key player in digital transformation, education and training. Following the investment in Meet in Class, and the creation of the educational channel Nathan TV jointly with Canal +, the integration of Educlever will lead to numerous technological, commercial and marketing synergies.
This acquisition is another landmark transaction for Avolta in the Edtech industry, having recently advised EEMI on its acquisition by ISTEC, Diplomeo on its acquisition by HelloWork, or Student Pop on its fundraising with Impact Partners and Educapital.
UI Investissement, a leading private equity firm, announced the acquisition and combination of ISTEC and EEMI, two higher education institutions, specializing in business and marketing for the former and technology for the latter. Founded by Jacques-Antoine Granjon (Veepee), Xavier Niel (Free) and Marc Simoncini (Meetic, Jaïna, Angell), EEMI is a pure player in digital training that has become a reference on the web in less than 10 years. Ranked in the top decile of French business schools, ISTEC is a member of the prestigious Conférence des Grandes Ecoles.
Avolta Partners has acted as M&A advisor to EEMI on this transaction. Backed by UI, ISTEC and EEMI are pooling their expertise to offer a new range of management, business and digital training courses. Alongside the management teams, UI will be involved in structuring the project and developing synergies that will improve the training of graduates.
Diplomeo is an online search platform for education which provides a step by step accompaniment to students from their first school to their first job. Thanks to an unparalleled matching engine and the extensive coverage of a 46,000 courses database, Diplomeo is used each year by 30% of French high school graduates.
This transaction is part of HelloWork’s external growth development strategy, which already led to the acquisition of various edTech players in recent years . The two companies now reach a wide audience of students, workers, training centers and companies, and will continue to innovate in the service of lifelong learning and employment. This synergy will enable them to provide the most complete response to the key challenges of apprenticeship and work-study training in France.
Founded in 2000, Educlever is a major actor of the digital education thanks to its 5 educational platforms for public (Maxicours) and institutional B2B (Civiscol for town halls, Seriniscol for companies, Enseigno for teachers and Efecto for scholar helping companies).
After 8 years of research on adaptive learning, Educlever is now in possession of a fully-functional adaptive learning software, named La Cartographie Des Savoirs based on 3 technologies. First, the content consists on thousands of course sheets, videos and exercises as well as a graph of knowledge showing the interactions between notions. Secondly, an adaptive learning engine processes pupils’ profiles to come up with a personal learning pathway. Finally, a learning management system manages the interface and makes it user-friendly.
The funding round has been done by Entrepreneur Venture.
Founded in 2013, C-way is born from the needs of its creator, Jeanne Chaumais, young mother of three children, who imagined a connected device answering the new uses of children from 3 to 11 years old and their parents. Thanks to its first product, Memoo, a connected station to listen to music, C-way aroused public and media’s interest in 2016 during the CES of Las Vegas. Among key functionalities, Memoo can among other functionnalities play bedtime stories and lullabies, offers a voice messaging system and displays information about the weather forecast.
Through this funding round, C-way intends to establish itself sustainably on the market of kid’s intelligent entertainment and plans to diversify its product range in the coming years.