In early 2025, the mood in Nigerian edtech was somber. Edukoya, a startup that had captured headlines with a record-breaking $3.5m pre-seed round, announced it was winding down. The failure was a heavy hit on the ecosystem: even high-profile founders and deep pockets could not overcome the “triple threat” of poor internet connectivity, low device penetration, and shrinking disposable income.
Yet, less than a year later, a select group of seasoned, Africa-focused investors is signaling that the sector is far from dead. Tuteria, a Lagos-based tutoring marketplace, has secured $2.6m in new funding led by Enza Capital and Chui Ventures, defying even Nigeria’s record-low venture funding in recent years.
The deal marks a significant moment of “new faith” in a market that many had written off. But this isn’t a return to the status quo. Instead, it reflects a strategic shift toward business models that prioritize high-stakes outcomes — like exam prep and international migration — over the broad, “synchronous learning” models that failed to scale.
The Tuteria Model:
Founded in 2015 by Godwin Benson and Abiola Oyeniyi, Tuteria has survived multiple economic cycles by operating as a marketplace rather than a content-heavy publisher. The platform connects students with verified tutors for over 450 subjects, ranging from core sciences to photography. Tuteria has also achieved modest recognition over its nine-year existence, winning the UK Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation in 2017 (with a $32,000 prize) and Facebook’s Internet.org innovation challenge for education in 2016.
The startup generates revenue through a commission model (15–30% per lesson). This allows the company to scale without the massive “burn” associated with producing and hosting high-bandwidth video content.
The platform is heavily geared toward “pivotal” results, such as the UTME 2026, IELTS, and GMAT. In a struggling economy, parents are more likely to spend on “must-pass” exams that lead to university entry or international opportunities.
Unlike startups that spent millions developing proprietary digital curricula, Tuteria focuses on human capital. Its verification process — including ID checks, competency tests, and qualification audits — addresses the primary pain point for Nigerian parents: trust.
The Shadow of Edukoya
To understand why Tuteria’s raise is notable, one must look at recent developments in the Nigerian edtech space. Data from Edukoya’s final years paints a portrait of a model that was fundamentally out of sync with its market.
Despite its $3.5m injection in 2021, Edukoya’s balance sheets showed a company consistently operating with net liabilities. While Edukoya reported onboarding 80,000 students, the conversion from “freemium” users to paying customers failed to cover the high cost of tutors, who were reportedly paid nearly $133/month — over three times the local average. The company’s long-term debt remained static at £1,948,714, suggesting that much of its “funding” may have been structured in a way that offered little operational flexibility.
“Rather than deplete resources chasing scale in a challenging market, we opted to halt operations,” the company stated, a move that some investors praised as “rational” in an environment of 30%+ inflation and weak consumer spending.
The “synchronous learning” model — live video classes — hit a hard ceiling. High data costs and erratic electricity meant that even interested users could rarely stay connected.
The Pivot to Survival
Tuteria isn’t the only survivor. Other players have stayed afloat by radically narrowing their focus.
- Decagon: Originally a software engineering bootcamp, Decagon faced a crisis as loan defaults rose alongside Nigeria’s inflation. The company has since shifted its core focus to the “Decagon International Degree Program,” helping students secure STEM degrees in the US. By pivoting to study-abroad facilitation, it tapped into the “Japa” (migration) trend — a sector where customers are willing to pay significant premiums.
- Gradely: This AI-driven platform raised a modest $250k — a fraction of Edukoya’s funding. By remaining lean, it has successfully expanded into international markets. Recently, Gradely appointed its former top tutor who built their international arm from scratch, as Deputy CEO — a move that underscores the importance of practitioner-led leadership over pure “tech” management.
What investors are learning
The divergent trajectories suggest investors are recalibrating their approach to Nigerian edtech. The Tuteria investment appears to reflect several emerging principles:
Proven operations matter. Tuteria has operated for nine years, demonstrating market fit and operational sustainability that idea-stage ventures lack.
Asset-light models reduce risk. Marketplace models that connect existing supply (tutors) with demand (students) require less capital than content creation platforms.
Localised solutions fit market realities. Home tutoring addresses connectivity and device access challenges that hampered Edukoya’s synchronous learning model.
Revenue visibility provides confidence. Commission-based models generate revenue from transaction one, unlike content platforms requiring scale before monetisation.
However, questions remain. Tutoria’s $2.6m raise is modest by global standards, and the investors — Enza Capital and Chui Ventures — are specialist Africa-focused funds rather than the tier-one European VCs that backed Edukoya. This may signal continued caution about the sector’s scalability.
The infrastructure challenge persists
Underlying these company-specific narratives is an uncomfortable truth: the infrastructure challenges that felled Edukoya remain largely unresolved.
Nigeria continues to face unreliable electricity supply, expensive data costs, and limited smartphone penetration outside urban centres. Disposable income remains constrained by inflation running above 30% for much of 2024. These are structural issues beyond any single startup’s ability to address.
“Even the most brilliant students can be let down by the system,” Ogundeyi said in 2021, articulating the problem Edukoya aimed to solve. Three years later, that system has proven more resistant to disruption than anticipated.
The question for Tuteria and its investors is whether a human-led marketplace model can navigate these constraints more successfully than AI-powered platforms. The answer will help define the future of edtech investment across the continent.
A New Chapter?
The investment in Tuteria suggests that the “Edtech 2.0” thesis in Nigeria is focused on unit economics over user acquisition. Investors are no longer looking for the “Netflix of Education” in a market where data costs are high and electricity is erratic. Instead, they are backing “The Uber of Education” — platforms that facilitate services that parents are already paying for, but doing so with higher trust and better technology.
As broadband penetration reaches 50% this year, the market is projected to reach $200 million in revenue. However, as the Edukoya story proves, hitting those numbers requires a model that can survive the reality of the Nigerian balance sheet.
A $2.6m investment into a Nigerian tutoring marketplace suggests that venture capital is returning to Nigeria’s education sector — but the “growth at all costs” playbook has been replaced by a focus on sustainable unit economics and vetted marketplaces.