Zeebo raises $17 Million in series B of Funding for Education Platform

Zeebo, a game producing company, whose purpose has been that of “helping the next billion play, learn and connect”, has recently announced the end of the second round of funding, which has brought the company $17 million. This amount of money comes from a private equity firm, SEC filing.

The company intends to use this amount of money in order to sustain the evolution and spreading of a new gaming console which can be used for educational purposes. Despite the fact that education and entertainment are not exactly industries that seem to get along just fine, as there are more and more statistics which point out to the fact that the poor performance of students in schools are related to the incredibly high amount of time spent by the young persons in front of digital devices, which include computers and video games, the company managed to develop a product which combines the need for education with the desire of students to play. It is proven that students also need to play, so, as long as we keep them playing something which is interesting and educational, and as long as they don’t just play, but they also study, this means that the product developed by Zeebo is near to the perfect solution for mixing the two elements.

The Zeebo system, which is a 3G connected digital entertainment/education platform, comes along with a console which can be plugged into the TV to wireless stream digital content, but which can also be used in order to browse the Internet, to check mails and to play games without being forced to buy DVDs or cartridges. This system, which the company has been producing since its launch in 2009 has been really successful on the market, but it looks like that, at the moment, the firm is looking to change the trajectory a little, as Zeebo has announced that it’s realigning its business operations to deemphasize gaming. This means that the former Zeebo system is going to be taken off the shelves and that operations in Mexico and Brazil are going to shut down. In order to replace this old product, which no longer corresponds to the company’s intentions, Zeebo is now focusing on ways of creating “interactive education” in India. It is said that the team working there is developing a next generation platform which is to be released in 2012 and which is to focus mainly on achieving education by the means of entertainment.

The original idea was that of producing cheap consoles which could be afforded by poor families in developing markets such as Russia, India, China, Mexico and Brazil. In June 2009, this product has been released on the Brazilian market, at the price of 499 Brazilian Reals, the equivalent of $312. The price has quickly managed to drop down to the value of 399 Brazilian Reals, and afterwards to the one of 299 Brazilian Reals, the equivalent of 170 US Dollars. The system has also been released on the Mexican market in November 2009, for the price of 2.499 Pesos, but soon dropped to the one of 2.249 pesos, the equivalent of 184 US Dollars. We do not know yet the price the new console is going to have.

Zeebo has previously raised $8 million in the series A funding which has been led by Qualcomm Ventures. The company was co-founded by the President and CEO, Mike Yuen, and by Reinaldo Normand. Yuen has previously been senior director of games and services at Qualcomm.