Dot & Line Raises Seed Funding from Sarmayacar

Dot and Line, an ed-tech startup, is an online market place where trained and certified teachers are listed. These teachers use Dot & Line’s powerful educational program to teach afterschool classes to students across Pakistan who are looking to improve their school grades, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

The curriculum has been built by math subject specialists from leading universities, experienced teachers from top schools and PhDs. Their cutting edge technology tracks student metrics and rates all teachers listed so parents are able to find a top quality tutor closest to their home.

The average student enrolled in a private school today at the grade 6 level has the math aptitude of a second grader. The platform’s goal is to bring millions of children in Pakistan to gain mastery in math. Through their 50 active centres, Dot & Line has already impacted hundreds of children and claims a 40% improvement in grades within 4 months of the program.

Co-Founder Lina Ahmed, a former analyst at Acumen and a graduate of The London School of Economics says,

There are half a million intelligent and highly qualified women in Pakistan who are not part of our workforce. Our mission is to seek them out and provide an opportunity to bring them back into the employment fold by making them trained and certified Dot & Line teacher partners.

The seed round is led by one of the country’s most notable VC investors, Sarmayacar. Dr. Bernhard Klemen, Partner at Sarmayacar, former VP at JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, and a successful serial entrepreneur will join the board of Dot and Line. Bernhard mentioned,

Dot & Line offers a high-quality curriculum in the attractive and sizeable education space; we at Sarmayacar are convinced that the team headed by two exceptional female founders and supported by us will scale across Pakistan for supporting and fostering the young talent of the country.

The investment round also includes Silicon Valley-based private investor and technology industry veteran Hasan Rizvi, former Executive Vice President of Oracle in California. Dot & Line will use the funding to add English literacy to their product offering, achieve further excellence in product development and target significant growth within Karachi and Lahore.

Maheen Adamjee, Co-Founder of Dot and Line, an award-winning journalist and an LSE grad says,

We aim to bridge the gap in quality education across the country because we believe every child can achieve their maximum potential given the right resources and teacher. Dot and Line will change the future of an entire generation.

The Math program is built for grades 2 through to 7, whereas the English program launching in August 2019 targets 4 to 10-year-olds and ensures strong reading fluency, comprehension, writing and vocabulary development. Classes are held in small batches at a certified Dot and Line teacher’s home and also cover exam prep and homework help, making it a one-stop holistic solution for each child.