Looop Raises $2m For New Mobile Online Learning Experience For UK SMEs

Looop’s online learning experience for small and medium sized businesses [SMBs] is about to land in the UK after the founders raised $2 million [£1.2 million] in seed investment with the sole motivation to expand onto these shores.

The mobile friendly online learning platform sourced the cash from an anonymous education investor and the money will also be used to develop a native iOS app to sit alongside the Android offering that is already available.

Looop’s platform is targeted at SMBs that train staff online and want a new way to make the process a more successful one by using mobile devices and the cloud. The platform has been set up in such a way that new or existing company learning materials can be uploaded to the Looop platform and any company that signs up can benefit from tools that track assessment progress.

Everything is set out in a mobile friendly format that works in harmony with the cloud and this is where it hopes to hit corporate online learning services that often use outdated software that doesn’t work on mobile devices or allow cloud collaboration.

“I genuinely don’t feel there are any other businesses directly competing with us in the same respect and this is because they haven’t been able to convert their training programs to mobile devices effectively, as of yet,” Looop cofounder Ben Muzzell told Tech Crunch.

Massive open online courses [MOOC] have been rolling out with some gusto in the US and in Europe courtesy of the likes of Iversity, Udacity, Coursera and Eliademy, though Muzzell doesn’t think that MOOCs are a competitor.

“MOOCs don’t fit into specific business objectives. They are also often directed towards students’ learning requirements rather than business learning needs, so we don’t view them as a direct competitor in that sense,” Muzzell added.

Looop’s next step is likely to involve its first leap into the US market that is expected to take place as early as next month.