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Austria-Based GoStudent Expands to U.S. With Online Tutoring

Europe's highest-valued ed-tech company, based in Vienna, has big plans to expand its user base in the U.S. with a new headquarters in Austin, Texas, amid a boom in the online tutoring market.

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GoStudent
The Vienna-based ed-tech company GoStudent has opened a new headquarters in Austin, Texas, following the company’s soft launch of its online tutoring platform in the U.S. late last year, a recent announcement said.

According to a news release, GoStudent’s new Austin office represents a milestone in the company’s plans to expand more into the U.S. digital learning market, where demand for online tutoring in K-12 schools has continued to grow during COVID-19.

Chief Growth Officer Laura Warnier said the company, founded in 2016, initially provided online tutoring for students in German-speaking countries before expanding into more than 20 countries across Europe and in Latin America, as well as Canada and Turkey.

As part of GoStudent's recent expansion efforts, the company acquired ed-tech companies FoxEducation, the U.K.-based learning platform Seneca Learning and the Spain-based Tus Media Group. The platform hosts about 1.5 million tutoring sessions spanning various subjects each month, according to the company.

Warnier noted that much of GoStudent’s recent growth leading up to the U.S. expansion came out of necessity, when COVID-19 forced schools to make the shift to and from virtual learning and closed after-school enrichment programs in 2020.

Before then, she said, many parents were resistant to the idea of online tutoring as a viable alternative to one-on-one, in-person support.

“We launched GoStudent in the German-speaking area before COVID-19 started, and back in those days, it was very hard to convince parents to [let kids] take tutoring online,” Warnier said. “With COVID, many were forced to do it online, and that’s when the perception was forced to change.”

According to a 2020 report from ResearchAndMarkets.com, there’s been “unprecedented demand” for K-12 digital tutoring services and tools, which wasn’t previously considered a large market.

With more focus now on K-12 online tutoring, analysts projected the market will grow by about $7 billion by 2023.

“Before COVID, 30 percent of the parents we were in touch with would not even take a trial session with us because they didn’t even want to try it out online,” Warnier said, touching on these trends. “This dropped to 3 percent today after COVID.”

GoStudent is among many U.S. ed-tech companies offering similar online tutoring services, including TutorMe, Step Up Tutoring and Wisdom Cafe.

Warnier believes GoStudent stands out partly due to its affordability, giving it an edge in the U.S. market, which has 50 million students between the ages of six and 18.

"The market conditions we've found entering the U.S. are advantageous. We expect a high-quality tutor supply, due to the strong number of top universities and the fact that university students pursue side jobs while studying," Warnier said in a public statement. "We are also mindful that in the U.S., online learning is already [more] trusted and established. This, paired with the fact that there are large rural areas where access to quality physical tutors is limited, and where online tutoring will be welcomed, makes for a promising launch."

Warnier said parents and students have started noticing the benefits of online support, such as its flexibility and wider pool of tutors to meet students' specific needs.

She said there are “no limitations" when it comes to online tutoring.

“We also have some tutors who specialize, for example, in ADHD or certain learning disabilities,” she noted of GoStudent's trained tutors. “Our main strength right now is our community of tutors.”

According to survey data from GoStudent, about 65 percent of U.S. parents have purchased some sort of one-on-one tutoring over the past year. While most of those cost an average of nearly $70 per session, the company says it typically offers its sessions for about $41 to make tutoring more accessible.

"Digitalization has always helped to democratize industries, and applying this logic to education is long overdue," GoStudent CEO and co-founder Felix Ohswald said in a statement.

Warnier said the platform hopes to reach a volume of 150,000 tutoring sessions booked per month across the country. She said the platform has noticed steady growth in its user base since coming to the U.S., as parents remain concerned about learning loss during COVID-19.

“We’ve been getting more and more customers,” she said, adding that specific data on its U.S. user base remained pending as of Friday.
Brandon Paykamian is a staff writer for Government Technology. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from East Tennessee State University and years of experience as a multimedia reporter, mainly focusing on public education and higher ed.