LinguaLeo

Functionality

Lingualeo personalizes each user’s learning program to make learning English more effective. First, Lingualeo offers users a placement test to determine their language skill level. The service then develops a personal training program that takes the user’s skills, goals, and preferences into account.

Lingualeo offers training materials designed for fast learning progress. Users complete exercises that allow them to learn grammar, increase vocabulary, and improve reading and listening comprehension. They can also track their learning progress using the program’s monitoring tools.

A defining feature of the service is that it allows each user to choose real-life content that he or she likes. A free Lingualeo account provides learners with access to most of the service’s content and tools. The collection includes more than 200,000 individual learning materials, including news, entertainment and business articles, TED Talks, popular songs, movie clips, stories, and jokes.

This approach solves the basic problem encountered in learning a foreign language — lack of motivation. The service uses gaming principles to capture the interest of learners, maximize enjoyment and engagement, and inspire them to continue learning. Leo the Lion is the main character of the service and a personal guide to the language jungle. This lion eats meatballs, and to receive the meatballs a user has to read texts, watch videos, complete language quests, and consolidate his knowledge during training.

Supported platforms

Lingualeo is available on the web, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and as a browser extension. Users can learn at home or on the go in the context of everyday life, surfing the web, watching new videos, and listening to their favorite music. Mobile applications include additional functionality and let users study without a network connection. Lingualeo web extensions are available for most popular Internet browsers and allow users to add new words to the personal dictionary and practice them later. All data is synchronized in real time across all user devices.

Business model

Everybody can use the basic version of Lingualeo’s service for free. Users can also buy premium service by upgrading to “Gold Status,” which includes over 20 additional grammar courses, nine video tutorials, four additional interactive practice trainings, and an unlimited personal dictionary. Lingualeo also provides a platform for authors and publishers, which allows them to create courses and receive a portion of the total revenue. The service also helps teachers and language schools to provide training, create individualized learning programs, and easily assess student progress.

History

In October 2009 Aynur Abdulnasurov, a young entrepreneur with a team of five developers, traveled to Koh Chang, Thailand to work on a personalized online service for studying English. In March 2010 the team came back to Moscow and launched a beta version of Lingualeo. By May they had expended the initial investment of $120,000, so development was put on ice for six months.

In November 2010 the team received $200,000 from a group of private investors, and by May 2011 the service had grown to 90,000 registered users. In May 2010 the Lingualeo team was listed among the top 10 Russian web development teams. In July 2010 the team won the BEAT-2011 contest. The service then reached a break-even point. By November 2011 it had 500,000 users.

In January 2012 Lingualeo released its iPhone app. In March, two years after the launch, Lingualeo had one million users. In May, the team released an application for Windows Phone. At that time the number of users reached 1.5 million, and Lingualeo announced that it had raised $3 million from the venture capital firm Runa Capital. In October 2012 it launched a mobile application for Android . In December 2012 LinguaLeo took first place in the Russian Startup Rating.

In February 2013 Lingualeo launched its service in Brazil, and in the first half of that year the team released new versions of its iPad and Android tablet apps. In November 2013 the service announced that it had reached seven million users.

In January 2014 Lingualeo announced that Dmitry Stavisky (former Evernote executive) would join the team as Chief Operating Officer. In February Lingualeo received the TNW Russian Startup Award for 2013, and also that month it reached 8 million users. In March 2014 Microsoft named English with Lingualeo its Windows Phone App of the Year. In June 2014 Dmitry Stavisky became CEO and LinguaLeo was launched in Turkey.

In January 2016 Lingualeo announced 2015 commercial results. The company performed 7% revenue growth vs 2014 and reached break-even in July 2015.