uDocz: Peruvian startup considered among the 20 most innovative in the world

uDocz, a Peruvian education platform that provides university students with educational materials, has been chosen among the Top 20 in the GSV Cup, a global competition that rewards innovation in educational technology companies (EdTech).

This website was born in 2018 with the aim of offering all university students in Latin America the possibility to learn and reinforce their subjects with quality content such as class notes, presentations, study guides, books made by students, among others. The platform has sub-groups of students which allows it to adapt to each student and their preferences.

“Our distinguishing feature is technology. While other companies focus on creating the content, we create the tools and technology that allow students to study, connect and share with each other. This makes it much more scalable and we can reach all students, in any field and subject of study,” said Ricardo García Izasiga, co-founder of uDocz and a graduate of UPC’s Software Engineering program.

For Ricardo, one of the main challenges was raising capital. “In 2018, we were selected in StartUp Peru and after that, we raised our first round of funding which was composed, for the most part, by foreign investors,” he said. In addition, he remarked that another of the great challenges was to have contacts with specialists in technology consulting. Fortunately, today they have mentors from companies such as Square, Facebook, Netflix, among others.

Top 20 in the innovation competition

GSV Ventures is one of the largest investment funds in the world focused on education. GSV together with the University of Arizona (ASU) created the ASU+GSV Summit, the most important event for the EdTech sector, where part of the meeting is the startup competition. It is in this competition where uDocz will compete for 1 million dollars. It is worth mentioning that this year more than 750 companies from different parts of the world have applied.

“It is incredible to be able to attend the event and be part of the competition, we are very excited to learn from leading companies in the sector and bring the best practices. I believe that events like this help investors have more and more Peruvian companies like uDocz in their sight,” said García.

The uDocz team has a total of 13 collaborators, of which 7 are graduates and students of the UPC. Ricardo García comments, “having been a student at UPC gave me a very solid base in different resources, but above all in technology, which has become one of the fundamental pillars for uDocz.”

As a projection, the uDocz team is considering building the best learning platform for the modern university student. They currently benefit 1.5 million students and have the goal of growing 20 times more in Latin America alone.