Global private school provider Inspired Education Group, has acquired Ostaz, formerly known as Synkers, an online tutoring platform founded in Lebanon in 2017 by Audrey Nakad and Zeina Sultan.

Ostaz connects students with qualified private tutors to help them complete their learning goals and support them throughout their academic journey starting from school to official exams. The acquisition will help Ostaz expand its offering into new markets.

“We are excited that Inspired is now our partner and will invest in the future of Ostaz,” said Nakad. “We believe that our partnership will enable Ostaz to grow its presence across the globe, bringing high-quality and personalised online and offline private tutoring to students from New York to Riyadh. If anything, the Covid-19 pandemic has catalysed the need for services like Ostaz and we see a burgeoning market and great demand for our offer.”

The startup has more than 43,000 students using its service around the world. This has amounted to the completion of almost 65,000 tutoring hours so far across a wide range of curricula such as British (GCSEs, A levels), French, International Baccalaureate, American, Saudi, Egyptian and Lebanese; in addition to languages, prep tests and soft skills.

Over this past year, online learning and edtech has seen greater adoption across the world. The company has so far concentrated its efforts in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, where it has partnered with educational institutions and will now seek to expand globally by leveraging Inspired’s presence around the world .

“We are thrilled to partner with Audrey, Zeina and the Ostaz team to expand its offering globally by leveraging Inspired’s presence on five continents,” said Nadim M Nsouli, founder and CEO of Inspired. “This acquisition complements Inspired’s other recent online initiatives which recently saw the launch of King’s College Online, a unique offering combining an online premium education with an opportunity to attend our physical schools.  The dynamic team at Ostaz have done a phenomenal job to date expanding in the Mena region and we look forward to working with them on the next phase of their journey as they expand in Inspired’s existing markets as well as new ones.”