North East commercial law firm, Square One Law, has advised NVM Private Equity on its £3.2m investment into Tutorful, a platform that connects students with tutors across the UK. The investment will be used to grow the rapidly expanding online tutoring business, by building out a suite of tools and curriculum-aligned content that helps tutors deliver exceptional quality lessons.
Sheffield based Tutorful was co-founded in 2015 by CEO Mark Hughes, a technology analyst who created the business with a simple aim; to take the hassle out of finding a private tutor. The platform helps parents and students to find the best local tutors for one-to-one tuition, either face to face, or via an innovative online classroom. With over 11,000 registered tutors covering 300+ subjects, and catering for early years all the way up to PhD level, site users can freely browse and review profiles of top-quality tutors based on subject area, level and proximity to their post code.
The UK private tutoring market is worth over £2 billion a year. There are 9 million school age children in the UK – 11% received private tuition in 2018, up from 6% a decade earlier and tuition for adult learners is on the rise with 1 in 5 university students seeking extra help. Additionally, the global tuition industry is worth $100 billion per year.
Mark Hughes, CEO of Tutorful, said “Tutorful started with a simple mission: to radically improve the quality and accessibility of private tutoring throughout the UK, and since 2015, we’ve already helped over 100,000 parents and students achieve their goals. This investment and support by NVM will help us accelerate our product innovation, particularly our online platform, to help us reach an even greater number of parents.”
Ishaan Chilkoti, Investment Manager at NVM, added “Tutorful represents an opportunity to invest in an exciting company operating in a large industry ripe for digital transformation. In a relatively short period of time the team has developed a platform which has proved appealing to parents and students, supported by a growing catalogue of positive online reviews. We look forward to working with Mark and the team as they continue to make high-quality tutoring accessible to more households.”
“We are grateful to Square One Law for the support that they provided to us throughout the deal. Their advice and guidance has been invaluable in achieving a successful completion of the investment.”
Mark Lazenby, head of the corporate team at Square One Law, said “It’s been great to work with the NVM team again on another transaction. This investment will enable Tutorful to grow their current offering and I’m sure that they, with the support of NVM, are well placed to meet their ambitious plans for future growth.”
