Classter: changing the world of education

Classter is a cloud-based platform that offers one-stop management solutions for academic institutions from primary education through to colleges and universities. Classter helps schools manage their academic, finance, transportation and library operations and interact with teachers, students and parents. From class schedules and bus timetables to invoicing and feedback to parents, Classter offer a customisable end-to-end solution to running an academic institution.

Until 2015, the company was focussing mainly on the Greek market, working mainly with private schools. Since then however, they have branched out, selling to over 400 academic institutions in the Balkans, southern Europe, Africa and most recently the UK and Germany.

The software behind Classter has been developed by Vertitech, a software development company financially backed by Odyssey Venture Partners and EIF. This investment allowed Classter to push ahead with product development, taking the product to the next level and improving the interface, but also to make a serious investment in sales abroad, reaching out to new clients. “Selling abroad is a different ballgame altogether and we needed to adapt and dedicate resources to that.”

This internationalisation effort coincided with the peak of the economic crisis back home: “The situation in Greece was very difficult with capital controls and political instability, and our clients were badly affected. But the investment came at the right time and we were able to stay on our feet, not lay off any staff, maintain our jobs – even hire three new employees - and focus on growing the product. Without it, we would have been much smaller today” explains Nikolaos Nikou, CEO of Vertitech, the company behind Classter.

Looking ahead, Classter is aiming to establish itself on the international scene and further grow the company to 15-20 people over the course of the next 18 months, fine-tuning the product and making it more of a ‘self-service’ offer. “Finding the right people, software developers with the right kind of know-how is always a challenge” Nikolaos points out. Despite the challenges, Classter remains committed to innovating and pursuing new ideas that will have the potential to change the world of education, one click at a time.

Company: Classter 

Financing Intermediary: Odyssey Venture Partners

Type of business: Education software

EIF financing: JEREMIE Greece

For further information about EIF intermediaries in Greece, please refer to:
http://www.eif.org/what_we_do/where/el