EdTech app Knowledge Officer raises £600,000 to bridge UK skills gap

London-based startup Knowledge Officer has secured £600,000 to develop its personalised online teaching app.

The company will use the money, provided by Kuwaiti investor Abdullah AlShaheen and ex VP at Fox Interactive Media, Ian Hurlock, to grow their team and support their recently launched app.

Knowledge Officer claims to provide a learning experience which is tailored to user’s career goals, interests and skill level. The app sets quizzes using machine learning algorithms and based on the information users input into it. The aim is to help people learn about topics which are essential to their aspirations, including skills they may be lacking to land their dream job. The more people learn, the more learning credits they earn.

The learning paths are based on data from job boards pulled from hundreds of websites. The startup then uses machine learning and natural language processing techniques to compare the requirements of each job title with articles on the web which cover the relevant topics.

Co-founder and CEO Ahmed El-Sharkasy used to be a full-time engineer at Onfido. He said: “The UK is suffering from a huge skills gap, especially in the tech sector. This problem will be even worse after Brexit and our company, Knowledge Officer, is the solution to that.”

El-Sharkasy and his co-founder, Ahmed Eshra,  said they hope their app can filter clickbait, to curate rather than create content. “We see the world is shifting into discovery and recommendation more than search. You open Netflix and watch the recommended films, you do the same with Spotify to listen to the best relevant music.

“We want our product to serve the future of recommendation and discovery in education and learning ,” he added. 

The app will be offered as a mix of a free model for users and premium model for SMEs.

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