Gamelearn closes $5M Series A to develop video games for corporate training

Gamelearn, which develops video games to deliver corporate training, has scored $5 million in Series A funding. Participating in the new financing round is previous backer Kibo Ventures, along with Oak3Capital, All Iron Ventures, UL Invest, and Inveready.

The Madrid-based startup says that it will use the new capital to boost the company’s production of “serious games” and reinforce its international presence. It currently has customer a base of 2,000 clients, spanning 50 countries. Those clients include LG, Thyssen Krupp, UPS, Hyundai, P&G, KPMG, Tetrapak, and Merck&Co.

Founded in 2007, Gamelearn is attempting to shake up the corporate training industry via its in-house developed game-based learning solutions and gamification for corporations. Its video games and simulators are designed to “train, communicate, inform, raise awareness and engage” employees. The company’s founders are Ibrahim Jabary, Mai Apraiz and Eduardo Monfort, each of whom has experience in corporate training.

Their take is that the startup’s bespoke video games and simulators can be used to meet a plethora of corporate needs, such as internal communication, digital transformation, management of change, leadership training, negotiation, time management, customer service, product training, project management or compliance.

“Corporate training is boring and non-engaging,” Gamelearn co-founder Mai Apraiz tells me. “Only 30 percent of e-learning courses are completed, meaning 3 out of 4 dollars invested in e-learning are wasted by corporations around the world. We create fun and engaging training experiences that allow our clients to achieve a 93 percent completion rate”.

Apraiz says these experiences are delivered through high-quality content, gamification, and simulation in a single product, which, she claims, no other company does. “The quality of our games is the best in the market. You can compare our products by checking our competitors’ websites against our own. That’s why we are the most awarded game-based learning company in the world”.

Proof that European tech companies are increasingly thinking globally, including pan-European, Gamelearn not only sells its products globally, but offers “Customer Success” support in 4 different languages, and the startup’s games are translated into a dozen different languages.

On Gamelearn’s business model, Apraiz says the company sells licenses to play its games on the Gamelearn platform or on other commercial Learning Management Systems that it integrates with. “We sell projects as well as subscriptions,” she adds.