Fast-growing EdTech start-up Busuu has hired two C-suite hires as it gears up for an IPO.
The London-based language app has appointed Joonas Kukkonen as CTO and Marc Munier as Chief Commercial Officer.
It said the duo form part of the company’s ambitious plans to float on the stock exchange in the next few years.
Last month Busuu announced that it had acquired the live video tutoring company Verbling in addition to opening a new office in Madrid and surpassing 100 million users worldwide.
“Both Joonas and Marc are experienced leaders in their respective fields, with strong track records of helping businesses scale,” said co-founder and CEO Bernhard Niesner.
“We’re excited to welcome both to our leadership team, as the company enters a new phase of growth to gear up to IPO.”
Kukkonen was recently an engineering lead at Spotify, where he was in charge of building the company’s podcast mobile experience.
He has over 14 years of experience in mobile app engineering, in addition to engineering management roles. He will oversee Busuu’s engineering teams in London and Madrid, helping the company continue to transform the way people learn languages through technology.
“Language learning is still in its first steps to becoming digitalised and has only seen the first promises of what impact personalised learning can have,” he said.
“Busuu has started on this journey by enhancing lessons through the use of machine learning technology and is in a position to change how we learn languages.”
Munier was Brandwatch’s EVP Revenue EMEA & APAC before going on to serve as Chief Commercial Officer at DevicePilot.
He will be responsible for scaling the company’s corporate language training offering, Busuu for Business, which is currently used by over 200 clients internationally.
“Busuu has ambitious plans to dominate the corporate language training sector and I’m incredibly excited to help it realise its growth potential in the market,” he said.
“There are plenty of great things about Busuu that attracted me to the company, from its experienced team and company culture to its clear objectives and the fact that it scaled fast out of its own cash flow – which is quite a rare find in the start-up world.”