Digital Textbook Startup Inkling Scores Sequoia Funding, Publisher Deals

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Inkling, a startup that develops a digital textbook platform, has just raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding today, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Kapor Capital, Sherpalo Ventures and Felicis Ventures. Inkling had previously raised seed funding from Mitch Kapor and Ram Shriram. Inkling has added Peter Currie, Former CFO of Netscape, and Bryan Schreier, Partner at Sequoia Capital, to its board.

As the iPad and other tablet devices become a go-to device at schools and colleges for consuming textbook content, Inkling is hoping to help publishers capitalize on that growth. Inkling’s platform, which launched today, delivers interactive textbooks that feature the ability to collaborate, add multimedia and communicate within content. Inkling aims to add another layer to online textbooks by adding 3-D objects, video, quizzes, and even social interaction within the content.

Inkling’s sync technology lets students collaborate in real time by sharing their notes and highlights with one another. And students can see comments from their friends and professors right alongside their own notes.

The startup has already struck a number of content development partnerships with textbook publishers, including Cengage Learning, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, and Wolters Kluwer. Inkling will partner with these publishers to add interactivity to textbook content.

Inkling launch today also coincides with the public debut of its iPad app, which is available in the App Store.

Company: Inkling Systems
Website: inkling.com
Launch Date: August 2009
Funding: $17M

The world’s first end-to-end platform for mobile learning content. Inkling makes it easy to bring rich, interactive learning content to tablet devices like iPad. Inkling engages students and provides authors and publishers with an exciting new way to bring content to market. It’s more than just the best digital textbook experience ever. It’s the best learning experience ever.

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