Docsity is an educational social network for those within the world of teaching whether it be university students, those in higher education, professors, graduate students or teachers.
Founded in Turin by a young team, the platform is at already available in 8 countries/languages, counts more than 1,2 millions users (plus 1500 each day), more than 1 million Q&A plus and more than 5 thousend documents posted on the site, and wants to consolidate in Italy and grow abroad.
That’s why the money raised and moreover the connections these new partners will bring are so important. International investors for Italian startups are not so common: especially Italian burocracy is seen as an obstacle by many of them. On the other hand, get in touch with an international investor as well as a wider competition can be really hard for Italian young entrepreneur.
Riccardo Ocleppo said to the startup news site EconomyUp, they entered the deal “after years of doors on the face” thanks to a personal connection with Narem Shaaram, one of the investor and founder of GOeuro, who involved other US business angels.
Among these angels (most of them undisclosed) are Eric Wahlforss, co-founder of Soundcloud, and, rumors say, a top level manager at Dropbox. “To convince investors – says the CEO Riccardo Ocleppo – have been the fact that we have an established user base, a solid innovative, business model proven to work and a foot abroad”.
“Our business model – explains Ocleppo – is based on services and premium contents, sold through the platform: subscriptions to the site, documents offered for sale by the best users, but especially tutoring and online tutorials provided by our certified tutor.”
It is estimated that the market of online tutoring is equal to 900 million euro in Italy and about 15 billion euro in the world. This market is targeted by many, at the moment in Italy the startup Tutored has developed a platform offering tutoring, in a sort of P2P model. Tutored is available only in Italy, but in few months the 3 young founders raised more than 400 thousand euros of funds and got a valuation of 2 millions euros.
