Capti Voice scored another $1 million in non-dilutive grant funding to help bring its ed-tech platform to the market.
The Buffalo-based startup recently learned it has been awarded a federal Small Business Innovation Research award, which will support its go-to-market strategy along with corporate partner ETS Strategic Capital.
Capti’s CEO Yevgen Borodin moved to Buffalo in 2019 to build his company, a personalized literacy platform for K-12 teachers.
The pandemic was a major drag on Capti’s traction, but the environment has turned favorable for the company. Districts are looking for creative ways to deal with lagging student performance, and for once, government stimulus has given them the financial flexibility to try creative approaches.
K-12 is a famously difficult market, but Capti is now working with more than 100 school districts and has more than 15 full-time team members (only six are officially employees). Borodin said his software platform goes well beyond broad assessment tools, helping reading teachers quickly zero in on what’s holding a student’s performance back.
He said the grant funding and an ongoing round of investor funding will support the expansion of Capti’s sales and customer support teams.
“School districts are realizing that students are so far behind and they are actively looking for solutions,” he said. “They have the money to try new things.”
Borodin said his company is poised to quickly gain marketshare in North America, where the ed-tech market surpasses $40 billion each year.
“We don’t ask schools to drop their current assessments,” he said. “But we promise that our tools can be used in a supplemental way to dig deeper and find out which specific foundational skills a student is struggling with.”
