Domestika, an online learning platform for creatives, announced on Thursday that it has raised $110M (approx €98.6M) funding in the Series D round, bringing the company’s total valuation to $1.3B (approx €1.1B).
Fund utilisation
The funding round was led by Zeev Ventures with participation from GSV Ventures and others. The company plans to use the capital to grow local operations across the globe and offer more courses in a range of languages.
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Julio G. Cotorruelo, Domestika’s co-founder and CEO says, “Our community has grown from humble beginnings, as a small forum for creatives in Spain to over 8 million users around the world, and counting. We plan to fuel this growth by expanding our offering in various languages and by continuing to bring the highest level of creative training in an accessible and affordable way.”
Domestika: What you need to know
Founded by Julio Cotorruelo, and Tomy Pelluz, Domestika was started as an online forum. But, thanks to its thriving community, the platform widened its reach by producing online courses.
Currently, it is an online community where creative experts share their knowledge and skills through professionally produced online courses.
The platform connects like-minded creative amateurs, hobbyists, and professionals, empowering them to learn, create and engage with others from across the globe.
The courses cover a broad creative spectrum, from illustration and design to crafts and digital marketing and beyond. Currently, the platform offers nearly 2,000 courses taught by 1,300 creative professionals.
110 new courses every month
Domestika says that more than 110 new courses are published every month. To date, the community has already completed more than 13M courses.
The company carefully curates its teacher roster and produces all courses in-house across 12 countries worldwide.
In the past 18 months, the Spain-born company has opened studios in the United States, the UK, France, Italy, and Germany to complement its original studios in Spain and Latin America.
Further, the platform launched its first courses in French, German and Italian, to complement its existing array of courses in English, Spanish and Portuguese, last year.
All courses are subtitled and translated into English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, French, Polish, and Dutch.
Investors
Based out of California, Zeev Ventures is an early-stage venture fund that invests in technology, financial, e-commerce, and consumer service sectors.
“At a time when it’s never been more vital for people to follow their passions and tap into their creativity, Domestika now has the scale to impact millions more around the world through its unique approach to education in creativity,” says Oren Zeev, Founding Partner at Zeev Ventures.
He adds, “Julio and his team have done an outstanding job in realizing their vision of building meaningful social learning experiences and bringing together curious minds from across the globe. I am excited to support the team as they continue to innovate and grow.”
GSV Ventures is a global venture capital fund focused on the rapidly growing digital education market from Pre-K to Gray. The company backs early and late-stage entrepreneurs to transform the $7T digital education and future of work sectors.
“GSV Ventures is so proud to align with the team at Domestika, who prove every day that learning should be social, joyful and beautiful,” said Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner at GSV Ventures. “Domestika is a game-changer in how we approach learning and creativity, empowering 8 million learners, and more than 1,300 teachers around the world to pursue their creative passions. We are excited about their opportunities to continue to grow and scale globally.”
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