uLesson — a Nigerian-based edtech startup — announced this week that it raised a $7.5 million Series A funding round for its online learning platform making remote teaching easier for students.

Through both streamings and the use of SD cards, uLesson — the self-proclaimed No. 1 learning app — is able to minimize data and streaming costs in an effort to bridge the education gap within Nigeria and Africa as a whole, Tech in Africa reports.

According to TechCrunch, this funding round was led by Owl Ventures — the largest venture capital fund in the world focused on the education technology market — along with other participants such as LocalGlobe and existing investors, TLcom Capital and Founder Collective.

This new financing arrives just little over a year after uLesson closed its initial $3.1 million seed round back in November 2019. Since then, the company’s value proposition has increased largely due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the world’s education systems.

Just weeks before the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic, uLesson launched onto the market just as smart devices began flooding homes across Africa to lead remote education.

“The ground became wet in a way we didn’t see before,” founder and CEO Sim Shagaya told TechCrunch. “It opens up the world for us to do all kinds of really amazing things we’ve wanted to do in the world of edtech that you can’t do in a strictly offline sense.”

The quick adoption of remote education successfully positioned the startup company as a supplement educational tool and helped it achieve 70 percent month over month growth, Shagaya shared. He claims that the digital infrastructure will allow the platform to “go online entirely by Q2 this year.”

With this new demand for online tools, uLesson is looking to explore other avenues in the digital space to further evolve into a live, online platform and integrate more features to expand its services.

According to TechCrunch, the startup has already begun to experiment with live tutoring — a new feature that will allow students to ask questions while going through pre-recorded material.

“We want you to be able to push a button and get immediate support from a college student sitting somewhere in the continent who is basically a master in what you’re studying,” Shagaya said to the outlet.

The influx of e-learning startups in the wake of the pandemic has allowed uLesson the perfect opportunity to capitalize off this high demand, especially in Africa where there’s a young population and as well as a slew of students attending private schools, according to Shagaya.

“Everybody sees that Africa is a big opportunity,” he said to TechCrunch. “But everybody also sees that you need a local team to execute on this.”

With more than one million downloads, uLesson is poised to become the future of e-learning as we continue to adjust to operating remotely.

For more information on ULesson, visit its website.