New Zoom Competitor Targets Higher Ed Users

Inside Higher Ed

Lindsay McKenzie

October 14, 2020

Ed-tech innovators and investors haven’t missed faculty members’ widespread frustration with current videoconferencing tools’ limitations — frustration that’s only grown as the global pandemic drags on and many classes continue to be delivered online or in hybrid formats.

Start-up company Engageli announced today that it has raised $14.5 million in seed funding to develop a new platform for remote instruction. It’s an impressive sum for a company that is just a few months old.

Unlike popular videoconferencing tools such as Zoom, the Engageli platform will be built from scratch specifically for higher education use. It will “seamlessly integrate hybrid, synchronous and asynchronous online instruction all in one platform,” said Dan Avida, CEO of Engageli.

Avida’s wife, Daphne Koller, is one of the co-founders of online learning platform Coursera. The couple were inspired to build Engageli after witnessing their daughters’ transition to remote learning in March due to COVID-19.

“I noticed that they weren’t always fully focused on the teacher or class and were clearly missing the social engagement, so we decided to find and recommend to their school a better tool than the conferencing software that the school was using,” said Avida.

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