GlobalScholar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may not meet the general notability guideline or one of the following specific guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for redirection, merge or ultimately deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.
This article has been tagged since April 2008.

GlobalScholar

Type	Private
Founded	December 2006
Headquarters	Bellevue, Washington (United States)
Key people	Kal Raman (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer); Thomas Boysen (Chief Learning Officer);
Industry	internet e-learning
Employees	~250+ (Mar 2008)
Website	http://www.GlobalScholar.com

GlobalScholar is an on-demand collaboration platform for tutors, parents, and students. Parents and students can find pre-screened tutors on a variety of subjects and school levels, and pay for one-time homework help or engage in ongoing tutoring sessions. The sessions occur on GlobalScholar’s Website, which provides an online whiteboard, audio chat, archiving, and billing.^[1]

1 History
2 Funding
3 Services
4 External links
5 References

[edit] History

GlobalScholar, formally known as InfiLearn, was founded in December 2006 by Kal Raman, a former drugstore.com chief executive and Amazon.com senior vice president ^[2]. The company has grown to about 250 people in March 2008, roughly half in the US (Bellevue, WA and Greeley, CO) and the rest in Chennai, India. ^[3] ^[4]

In January of 2008, GlobalScholar launched two new services, SchoolFinder and CollegeFinder; two new websites dedicated to parents and students to discover and learn more about their current and future schools.

GlobalScholar.com made a strategic decision on January 31st, 2008, to acquire Excelsior Software to expand the solutions it offers school districts and in order to offer Excelsior’s many loyal customers an even broader collection of educational services.

[edit] Funding

The company secured $27 million in round B funding on January 31st 2008 from existing investors Ignition Partners and Knowledge Universe Education. This was on top of a previously undisclosed $15.5 Million of Round A funding the company raised early last year. The funding included additional investments from Knowledge Universe Education, a leading global education company; Ignition Partners, a premier venture capital firm; and an added investment from Peter Neupert, an existing board member;^[5]^[6] ; Excelsior Software, with long-standing relationships in the education community, was also acquired. ^[7] ^[8]

[edit] Services

GlobalScholar.com offers a unique online tutoring platform, where parents and students can connect with tutors/educators who provide one-on-one tutoring, homework help or self-paced learning. The platform can also be used by schools and school districts to enable teachers and administrators to more efficiently and effectively create, manage and align content, assessments, curriculum, standards and supplemental learning.^[9] ^[10]

In addition to GlobalScholar, the company also launched two other Websites in January 2008. SchoolFinder pulls together relevant information for elementary and high schools and lets parents compare one school against another. CollegeFinder does the same for colleges, pulling in rankings from U.S. News & World Report and the Princeton Review. ^[11]