Google Capital Invests $40 Million in Online Education Company

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Google Capital, which is the late-stage investment arm of the American multinational corporation Google, has recently invested $40 million in Renaissance Learning through their new growth-equity fund. Renaissance Learning is one of the foremost cloud-based K-12 education and assessment platforms for children. This new investment makes the overall valuation of the Wisconsin-based education technology company at $1 billion. Google Capital, launched one year ago, will now own a minor percentage of Renaissance Learning. Moreover, the Board of Directors of the learning analytics company will now include a representative from Google.

Jack Lynch, CEO of Renaissance Learning, said “We didn’t need the capital, but it definitely opens the door for many other opportunities.” He also said that the company has strong revenue. Although Renaissance Learning may not be as popular as Google, it has a strong presence in the online education field. The European equity firm Permira owns the majority in the company which was established in 1984. Lynch claimed that around 20 million students and one third of American schools use their cloud-based educational software and solutions offered by Renaissance Learning.

The analytics company currently provides a wide array of web and desktop-based assessment and learning tools. However, its main focus is on offering a data-driven approach to education for both students and teachers. With the help of cloud computing, the software facilitates educators in designing better lesson plans for the learners. The programme enables the teachers assess the students’ performance and track their progress in different subjects. The educators can also use gathered data to find out alternative solution and support their students in writing, reading, language arts and maths.

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Lynch said that their tools offer “very precise insight into what students will know in order to calculate and determine better sequencing.” He also said that the teachers can use the programmes very easily. Educators can get access to the cloud data from their tablets, laptops and desktops. Suppose a 4th grader encounters a problem with understanding out fractions, then the educator can simply input the information into the cloud based system, and solutions will be instantly provided through the its analytic channels.

Google has made several efforts for the development of education over the last few years like launching Google Apps for Education, Chromebooks and the recent online interactive learning tool Oppia. The search giant also provides various other resources and lesson plans to the educators. But it has not offered any online assessment solutions yet. Currently both Google Capital and Renaissance Learning are still working out the details of the deal. Renaissance is planning to utilise the added funds to work on the products and solutions that are placed in the pipeline.

Google Ventures had also financially supported an e-learning applications start up company, Subtext, in 2011 by investing $3 million. However, Renaissance purchased Subtext later. So the current investment from Google may be utilised for development in this area. This investment can also prove to be beneficial for Google as it provides educational versions of well known Google products like Chromebook Computers, Google Docs, Gmail etc.

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