Akdemia

Market position

Akdemia was profiled in 2013 among a group of Latin American education startups building products tailored to regional needs rather than replicating US models. Its stated long-term ambition was to become a leading distribution channel for third-party educational services and content to families across Latin America, using the school management platform as the access point.

The company emphasizes breadth of functionality in a single system — arguing schools using it do not need additional services, reducing cost — together with configurability to each school's and country's educational standards, usability intended to minimize training, and an administrator-facing engagement panel that measures and drives adoption across faculty, parents and students.

Technology

A cloud-hosted web application accessible from any browser-equipped device on any operating system, complemented by native iPhone, iPad and Android apps with push notifications. Components include a proprietary mass-email delivery system intended to avoid spam filtering, configurable grading and evaluation-period logic, classroom walls and discussions, report templating aligned to national standards, synced calendars, per-user cloud file storage, and engagement and academic analytics. Job listings reference a Ruby on Rails back end and a ReactJS/JavaScript front end alongside native iOS and Android development.

Go-to-market

The company markets through its website with a demo-request form and an invitation-based onboarding flow, and has at times operated a closed beta with a waitlist form. Remote product demonstrations are offered via video call. In its early phase it hired country managers in Brazil and Mexico to expand regionally, and it uses a content blog to reach teachers and school leaders.

Primary and secondary educational institutions and their communities — school administrators, teachers, students and parents. Early efforts targeted private schools in Venezuela before expansion across Latin America.

Geography

Founded in Venezuela and focused initially on private schools there, the company later hired country managers in Brazil and Mexico to expand across Latin America. Listed locations include Lima District, Lima Province and Lima, Peru, and Dover, Delaware, USA. Product content and support are offered in Spanish.

History

Coverage from February 2013 describes Akdemia as founded in Venezuela a few months earlier, initially serving private schools in that country before hiring country managers in Brazil and Mexico. The company graduated from Telefónica's accelerator Wayra and was selected as one of 17 teams for Wayra's first Global Demo Day in Miami in December 2012. A Techstars company profile lists a 2012 founding year, seed stage and a headcount band of 11–50. The product platform has continued to ship releases, with the academic module at version 2.50.189 and a separate billing and payments module.