28 Sep Wealth Club clients invest £1.3 million under EIS in BibliU
BibliU, the company delivering affordable and accessible course online books for universities, libraries and other higher education institutions has raised £1.3 million from Wealth Club clients under the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS). This funding came into the third tranche of BibliU’s £15 million Series B round, where the final £4.7 million was closed out, with Wealth Club taking 27% of the tranche.
Launched in 2015 at the University of Oxford’s Start-up Incubator, BibliU was created to address the problem faced by many students when paying for the increasingly expensive learning materials required for their courses. Due to the increasing costs of university textbooks, which have risen by four times the rate of inflation since 1977, many students have turned to second-hand, rented or even pirated copies to make ends meet. This has led to publishers increasing their prices in order to recover lost revenues, exacerbating the problem.
BibilU is used by 112 leading universities from Oxford, Cambridge to Cornell and Phoenix in the United States. The platform allows higher educations institutions to license textbooks and courseware, primarily in digital format – for all students for a single, low, standardised pre student/per class fee, rather than having to set to separate contracts with each publisher. Students can also access content on-demand through BibliU’s marketplace – the digital equivalent of a library – saving up to 50% in costs.
The funds invested will enable the company to continue its expansion across the UK and US, develop new products, secure additional publisher partnerships and invest further in sales and marketing, stimulating growth.
Alex Davies, CEO and Founder, Wealth Club said: “BibliU is a great example of a company solving long existent problems with modern day tools. It allows hundreds of thousands of students to access course materials at little or no costs, helping to improve the accessibility of education while also improving learning outcomes. This in turn has delivered great commercial success, with a proven product in a growing market and the pandemic has only accelerated demand.
With success in both the UK and the US, as well as the support of an impressive group of investors, it comes as no surprise that the company has proven popular with our clients who have interested £1.3 million into the business.”
Dave Sherwood, BibliU’c Co-Founder and CEO said: “Working with Wealth Club has been a fantastic experience. They raised over £1 million to close off the final tranche of our series B under tricky market conditions in a very short six week timeframe. BibliU is looking forward to growing with the WC investors in future. The latest round of investment in BibiliU, from a highly valuable group of investors, will only serve to further our mission to provide high-quality, accessible and vital learning resources at an affordable cost. This funding will help facilitate this businesses continued growth be developing new technology that will further streamline processes for publishes and academic institutions and, most importantly, improve the leaning experience and outcomes for all students, regardless of their individual needs or circumstances.”
