Russo-American startup Coursmos, a developer of short online courses, has raised $530,000 from Russian venture fund Imperious Group and business angel Evgeniy Medvednikov.
The funds will be used to develop the platform and to add more staff. Coursmos is also planning to develop new features for the site including a system to recommend courses to users depending on their interests, better search facilities and integration with YouTube and social networking sites.
Coursmos breaks down the traditional Massive Open Online courses (MOOC) on various subjects into smaller courses. The courses offered by the platform are made up of a maximum of seven lectures, each lasting no longer than three minutes. The project’s founders reckon that their solution makes education less time-consuming. Users of the resource can also create courses themselves with the help of an app for smartphones.
The Coursmos project was launched in 2013 by Pavel Dmitriev and Roman Kostochka. The startup has already attracted $840,000.
Financing the project is the Ukrainian business incubator Happy Farm, with whom Imperious Group entered into a cooperation agreement. Coursmos is based in San Francisco. As of June 2014, there are 1,500 courses available on the system, made up of 6,631 mini-lessons.
Imperious Group is a Moscow-based fund, whose initial capital comes from real estate. Focusing on the Internet, mobile apps and e-commerce sectors, it invests actively in Russia and Ukraine. It is currently entering new markets, including Armenia, Israel, India, Baltic States, Europe, the USA and Canada.
