Houlihan Lokey Advises Twinkl

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Twinkl, a leading edtech platform providing supplemental teaching materials to early years, primary, and secondary school educators globally, has received a growth investment from Vitruvian Partners. The transaction closed on 21 February 2023.

Twinkl was founded in 2010 in Sheffield by husband and wife Jonathan and Susie Seaton, with a mission 'to help those who teach’. The company provides high-quality online learning materials and services, all of which are teacher-created and checked. Offering more than one million resources, ranging from schemes of work and assessments to augmented reality games and a DoE-validated phonics programme, Twinkl is used and trusted by schools and educators in more than 200 countries and regions, including primary and secondary school teachers, nursery workers, and parents. The company has approximately 1,500 team members based in its Sheffield offices and remotely around the globe.

Vitruvian Partners is an independent growth capital firm headquartered in London with offices in London, Stockholm, Munich, Madrid, Luxembourg, San Francisco, and Shanghai. Vitruvian focuses on dynamic situations characterised by rapid growth and change across industries spanning information technology, financial services, life sciences and healthcare, media, and business and consumer services. Vitruvian Funds have backed more than 50 companies and have approximately €10 billion in assets under management. Notable investments to date include global market leaders and innovators in their field, such as Just Eat, Farfetch, Darktrace, Trustpilot, Marqeta, TransferWise, Global-e, Bitdefender, and Skyscanner.

Vitruvian is partnering with Jon and Susie Seaton along with the rest of Twinkl’s management team in the transaction. The investment will support Twinkl in deepening its presence in key international markets, providing its teacher-created content in more schools across the world.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to Twinkl. This builds upon Houlihan Lokey’s market-leading position in the education technology sector. Other recent transactions include the sales of FutureLearn to Global University Systems; Clio to Egmont; ICS Learn to Skill & You; Circus Street to QA; CPOMS to Raptor Technologies; EducaEdu to Miura Partners; QuestionMark to Learnosity; EducationDynamics to Renovus Capital; and Skillsoft on its Chapter 11 restructuring and subsequent sale to Churchill Capital Corp II.