Preply, a platform to find foreign language tutors for home or Skype lessons, has just entered the Polish market with a localized version of its website.
Launched in 2012 by Kirill Bigai, Serge Lukianov and Dmytro Voloshyn, three Ukrainian entrepreneurs, the startup initially expanded to the Russian, Belarussian and Kazakhstani markets.
“Poland came as our next target because it is a large Slavic market and competition is not too hard,” Bigai told Ukraine Digital News.
“We are now planning to expand to Germany and Brazil,” he added.
Among Preply’s competitors are E-korepetycje.net in Poland and Repetitors.info on the Russian and Ukrainian markets. The latter is part of Eruditor Group, which raised considerable amounts in 2012 and 2013 from Intel Capital and major Russian funds.
Preply’s financing was more modest. An initial investment of $175,000 was brought in by Vostok Ventures and Value Adding Company as well as business angels Semyon Dukach, Torben Majgaard, Boris Shakhnovich and Vadim Yasinovskiy.
Preply now has two headquarters, in Kyiv (Kiev) and Moscow. So far more than 4,000 tutors have registered on its platform to teach 12 languages, including English, German, French, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Chinese, and others.
