Noodle Factory, an AI-powered edtech platform, has announced that the company has closed a US$500,000 seed funding round. The round is supported by edtech accelerators, EduSpaze and SuperCharger Ventures and a consortium of seasoned angel investors.
With the seed funding, Noodle Factory plans to extend its platform to K-12 (Secondary) institutions and expand its presence to the UK, Australia, US and Canada.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education all over the world, and it has highlighted the need for edtech solutions that can augment what teachers do and boost student engagement and learning. Noodle Factory gives educators the ability to scale their teaching efforts in both physical and virtual classroom environments.
“We have always believed that technology should make things easier, rather than add more workload. Teachers are our everyday heroes, and yet they are often bogged down by repetitive tasks. We are so happy to be able to give teachers back their time with our platform, which automates tasks like marking and tutoring using AI,” said Yvonne Soh, co-founder and CEO of Noodle Factory.
In line with the Singapore government’s vision of education
With S$500 million earmarked towards developing AI capabilities in Singapore and the Ministry of Education specifically focused on tasks such as AI-marking, the need for platforms like Noodle Factory is essential.
Whilst most edtech platforms are exclusively oriented towards the student, Noodle Factory was built with the educator in mind. The platform aims to help educators effectively scale tutoring and exam preparation by using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automate assessment creation, grading, exam prep and the setting up of knowledge bases for AI tutoring. NLP is a form of artificial intelligence that extracts meaning from human language and understands the context of what is being written.
“We see many schools adopting technology to augment the way teachers teach and Noodle Factory’s AI platform can really help to further engage the students; providing an effective way for personalised learning to improve learning outcome,” said Alex Ng, Managing Director, EduSpaze.
The pandemic has not helped teachers manage their workloads, with Singaporean teachers on average spending less than 40% of their time on actual teaching according to a 2019 survey by Talis. With home-based learning and new administrative challenges to implement safe distancing protocols, it can lead to a disconnect from their peers and curriculum, low motivation and engagement levels among students.
With an easy-to-use platform, teachers are able to reduce time spent on grading and developing assessments and focus on teaching students and developing the curriculum. This is why Noodle Factory’s solutions are already being used on more than 2,000 students from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, SIM Global Education and ITE.
“Noodle Factory was one of the 9 impressive startups selected from 235 applicants to our second cohort in 2021. It is great to see validation by the market of their unique product set combining NLP and a focus on the educators through closing this seed funding round. We are looking forward to continuing to support Noodle Factory in their expansion into Europe and Asia and to see them grow and scale to the next level,” shared Tamas Haiman, Co-founder, SuperCharger Ventures.
Date published: 2021