ELSA, a smartphone app that helps non-native English speakers develop grammar and speech skills, has raised $15 million in financing rounds co-led by Vietnam Investments Group and SIG.
Current investors including Google’s Gradient Ventures, SOSV and Monk’s Hill Ventures Artificial Intelligence-focused venture fund joined the company’s Series B funding phase.
ELSA—which stands for English Language Speech Assistant—was co-founded in 2015 by Vietnamese entrepreneur Vu Van and engineer Xavier Anguera. The software was based on Van’s experience while studying in the U.S. as a non-native English speaker.
Van has partnered up with Anguera, who specializes in optical speech synthesis, and launched a service in Vietnam before spreading to India and Japan. The app has 13 million subscribers and the company’s sales rose by nearly 300 per cent in 2020.
Van, the 37-year-old chief executive officer of ELSA said that first, they decided to go to Vietnam because that’s where his heart is, and he knows how it will help people in his home country, but they’ve been setting out on a global quest since the very early days.
After growing up in Vietnam, Van moved to San Francisco to pursue a master’s degree in education and an MBA from Stanford University.
