Kavi and Paul
Ada Ventures is pleased to announce its investment in Medly AI, a start-up that brings personalised tuition to more students. It's a pocket-sized private tutor for all. As a parent of two, I know that education is one of the most important privileges children can have.
Ada is investing £550,000 into a £1.7m round alongside the lead investors, the impact-focused fund, Eka Ventures and angels. Institutional partners include UCL, Innovate UK, Microsoft and Google.
Medly AI could revolutionise education, ensuring all students, regardless of their background, benefit from private tuition and personalised learning.
Medly AI is on a mission to democratise education by making high-quality, personalised learning accessible to all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background. The educational app provides personalised, curriculum-based education. It uses advanced AI technology, neuroscience, and proven teaching theories to identify individual students’ strengths and weaknesses.
The Medly app provides personalised exam papers and questions tailored to student ability and their specific exam syllabus. A student, for example, can take a photo of an exam or homework question for immediate help and engage in interactive discussions with the AI to deepen their understanding of the subject and topic. Students benefit from instant marking and feedback and can track their progress using gamified maps and levels.
Ada Ventures is on the lookout for start-ups that boost economic empowerment. We want to do our bit to ensure everyone can benefit from a changing economy and support those start-ups that inclusively transform money, work, and skills to reverse rising inequality. Improving education is a way to tackle inequality at its root, and make sure everyone, regardless of background, has access to well-paid work.
Disparities in education affect earning potential and entrench inequality for life. For example, school closures during Covid-19 hampered children's ability to learn; a study funded by the Nuffield Foundation calculated that the lower GCSE results for that generation could lead to lower lifetime earnings of £31bn.
Private tutoring is a valuable tool in improving educational attainment. As highlighted in a government report, the Education Endowment Foundation(EEF) estimated that tuition could help struggling pupils to make around four months’ additional progress over the course of an academic year.
Parents know this. Recent research by educational charity the Sutton Trust suggested that a third of 11 to 16-year-olds in the UK have benefited from private tutoring at some point. This proportion increased after the pandemic. But this kind of educational support is too expensive for many parents. Only 13% of pupils from the lowest income households have accessed private tutoring.
GCSE grades determine the future life outcomes of disadvantaged children the most, according to new research from the University of York. Their findings suggest that if you are from an under-resourced background your grades matter the most.
This is where AI could democratise access to private tutoring, ensuring it isn't just the preserve of those who can afford it. It could improve the exam results of thousands and thousands of children who don't have a private tutor.
Since its initial launch last year, Medly AI has helped over 20,000 students improve their GCSE exam grades by an average of two grades.
Medly AI also captures a traditionally underserved but much larger market, with their users representing the average GCSE student rather than those who are high attainers. Applied globally, the opportunity is huge.
The global AI in education market was valued at $3.43 billion in 2023. It is projected to reach $54.5 billion by 2032. The global private tutoring market size was worth around $96.75 billion in 2023.This could grow to around USD $181.42 billion by 2032. Driving this growth is the desire for individualised learning and supplementary education - this is where AI comes in.
Paul Jung (MBBS, PhD) and Kavi Samra (MBBS, AFHEA) are both medical doctors. They come from low-income backgrounds and have firsthand experience with the educational inequalities prevalent in society. Overcoming obstacles through sheer determination and hard work, they are both acutely aware of the educational advantages that were out of reach for their families. This is why we think they have what it takes to make Medly AI succeed.
Kavi grew up on a council estate in Slough, and passed the 11+ exam, securing a place at a grammar school. This pivotal opportunity changed his life trajectory and led him to study medicine at University College London (UCL). He recognised, working as a private tutor himself later whilst in medical school how much of a difference one on one education can make to a student’s attainment, but also interest in a subject. Later on, working as a doctor during the COVID-19 pandemic, through witnessing the health implications of coming from a lower socioeconomic background, he was reminded of how inequality starts with education.
Paul grew up similarly, as the child of first-generation immigrants. He often had to help his parents navigate bureaucracy from a young age. This responsibility forced him to figure out many aspects of life on his own, instilling resilience but also highlighting the challenges faced by students without adequate support. Paul completed his medical degree in addition to a PhD in Neuroscience, and the insights have allowed him to develop a custom AI architecture that adapts to each student’s unique learning style. This could revolutionise teaching.
Medly AI was conceived in the Hatchery startup incubator programme at BaseKX, UCL’s dedicated entrepreneurship hub, run by UCL Innovation & Enterprise.
We were impressed by the team’s drive to build, iterate rapidly and impact users positively fast. Here at Ada Ventures, we knew rapid and focused due diligence was imperative to keep momentum.
The additional funds will be spent on two main priorities. New hires will accelerate development and allow for more aggressive timelines. Medly AI is planning to increase its market spend to capture more of the market quickly and achieve the goal of becoming the leading AI tutor globally.
They've already successfully launched support for AP, GCSE, and A-Level curricula. English will be released very soon, along with a dedicated web mode to complement the app. IB curriculum support is also launching soon. Then they’ll begin moving vertically to reach students below GCSE age and help learners even earlier in their educational journey.
