A pre-seed investment round of US $110,000 has been concluded by Morocco-based SmartProf, an online tutoring marketplace for school-age pupils. This money will be used to support the company’s growth both inside its home market and beyond the West African area.
A one-stop ed-tech platform for private teaching in North and West Africa, SmartProf was founded in 2021 by Ali Faouiz, Mustapha Faiz, and Hamza Faiz.
“We launched Smartprof after noticing that the private educational system was failing in Morocco. We were convinced that every student needs some kind of private assistance in order to overcome the challenges faced at schools. The private tutoring market is very fragmented; finding a tutor is a nightmare. Additionally, there’s no visibility on pricing, so there was a real need for a tech product that creates a great tutoring experience,” said Faiz.
Plug and Play, UM6P Ventures, and a few angel investors collectively contributed US $110,000 to the pre-seed round. Additionally, organisations like the École Centrale Casablanca and the Startgate campus of the UM6P support it. The funding will support Smartprof’s growth throughout West Africa and Morocco as well as enable them to recruit more developers to raise the caliber of their product.
“One of the major challenges of our company is the complex and poor payment infrastructure in Morocco. But the market opportunity for us remains huge, that’s why we try to adapt as much as possible to a very rigid banking system,” Faiz said.
