Jordanian Edtech Hello World Kids Set for Expansion into Egypt

The edtech sector has been on a steady four-year growth with 2021 seeing a number of stellar rounds within the MENA VC ecosystem. The onset of the pandemic propelled the growth of the sector, attracting a wealth of new investors.

The latest EdTech startup to secure funding is Jordan-based Hello World Kids, which raised an undisclosed pre-Series A round led by Daam Almonsha'at Holding, Oman Technology Fund with participation from Vision Ventures.

The current round will help the company expand into Saudi Arabia with a new investment round in the works that will fuel its expansion into Egypt and Pakistan. 

Founded in 2015 by CEO Hanan Khader, Hello World Kids is an online interactive platform developing content that will help kids learn how to code, at home and in school. The company offers a coding curriculum for schools that can equip students with key skills like data analysis, problem-solving and analytical thinking.

"Our mission is to simplify the coding education for kids, that's why we have created a new programming language, which we called SmoothY; a unique programming language specifically designed for children to serve as a transitional bridge to the command-based programming languages,” Khader says. “Once children learn SmoothY, they will be capable of reading and writing code using Python, Java, JavaScript, or any other professional programming languages in the world.”

The platform is the largest Arab community to teach programming and coding to children, with more than 350,000 projects submitted and over four million lines of code recorded on the platform.