Geek Express started as an art gallery in 2016 and transformed into an Ed-tech platform in 2017 that now offers more than 50 courses in coding and tech literacy. It became an academy with summer camps, yearly programs, franchising locally and regionally, creating our DIY kits, collaborating with schools, universities, and running competitions. In 2019, Geek Express went online, and with that growth, it now has the capabilities to serve parents and children across the region.
Today, it is the first online tech school with an accredited k-12 curriculum, a frictionless journey for parents, and an engaging experience for the children. It has a team of 22, with 170 dedicated Geek Express trainers, serving 1800 students.
We talked to Geek Express Team about the impact of the support received through their participation in the WEEL project, funded by the European Union and implemented by Expertise France.
Growth and Impact
“We were planning on expanding into Saudi, and we needed to achieve a large market penetration to localize the brand to appeal to the Saudi audience with a well-known marketing agency who could help us: hyper-localize our landing pages and communication funnels, launch a market penetration campaign including concept, production, and distribution across digital media and influencers and handle the recurrent digital media presence after phase 2 is done. The WEEL project, funded by the European Union assisted us in subsidizing a large part of this campaign.
Through the support of the WEEL project we aim to launch a large-scale market penetration campaign in Riyadh. The campaign will lead to a solid user-base in the largest ed-tech market in MENA, Saudi Arabia, increasing our MRR, and preparing us for the Series A. It will also lead to an increase of 20-30% of hired undergraduate and graduate Lebanese trainers who teach our courses to accommodate for the increase in demand. We will also have an opening of 2 full time job opportunities in the field of training and sales in Lebanon, to cater or the newly landed market.
Geek Express aspires to expand geographically within the Middle East and North Africa, starting with the GCC and Egypt. The business has started making progress on these plans by setting up operations in the UAE, where we currently have a legal entity. The Geek Express team is continuously working on tech stack development, supporting teachers, collaborating with renowned governmental and private entities, and content development. The business is also striving to be more data-driven and has been investing heavily in gathering insight from marketing analytics and assessing various metrics to inform its future direct-to-client strategy.
Our ability to scale is directly intertwined with access to resources, be it financial support such as grants and fundraising opportunities, or other types of interventions including technical support and human capital development.”
About WEEL
WEEL is part of a larger programme, the EU for Women Empowerment (EU4WE), a 42-month programme (October 2019 – March 2023) funded by the European Union and implemented by Expertise France. It aims at promoting full and unconditional equality between men and women in Lebanon. The specific purpose of EU4WE is to reduce gender-based violence through women’s empowerment and enhance existing institutional mechanisms working towards gender equality.
