Orcas

Orcas is a Cairo-founded tutoring marketplace that connects parents and K-12 students with vetted, trained private tutors for one-on-one lessons covering homework help, exam preparation, and language practice. Founded in 2017 by Hossam Taher and Amira El-Gharib, the platform grew to serve tens of thousands of families in Egypt and expanded into other MENAP markets including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Orcas raised a $500,000 pre-Series A round led by Algebra Ventures with participation from NFX Ventures, and later a $2.1 million round, to build tools letting schools and teachers run live online learning. In January 2024, Orcas was acquired by Baims, a Kuwait-based ed-tech company, and continues to operate under the Orcas brand via an app and a web platform (app.orcas.io) that has facilitated more than 100,000 tutoring sessions with over 600 tutors.