There’s investor appetite for local edtech startups: Edtech startup Edura has closed a six-figure USD pre-seed round led by local tech company Smart Zone Startup Studio, co-founder and CEO Osama Abdelwahed told Enterprise. Smart Zone contributed 80% of the funds and the remaining amount was deployed by an unnamed angel investor, Abdelwahed added.

About Edura: Founded in 2021, Edura offers pre-recorded and live interactive lessonsand online assessments to both K-12 and university students. It currently serves over 190k students across all educational levels with the help of over 2.4k teachers, the company said in a statement (pdf) yesterday.

Where’s the money going? The investment will help Edura “enhance the platform's capabilities, expand its operations, and strengthen the development team,” the statement reads. The company also plans to invest in expanding its customer base and to ramp up spending on marketing to reach more teachers across the country, Abdelwahed said.

More funds are on the way: Edura plans to close a seed round before the end of the year,Abdelwahed said.

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Thndr sets up a research unit: Thndr Securities has launched a research platformunder a sister brand dubbed Rumble, after it received a research license allowing it to offer insights and recommendations to investors, the online trading platform announced in a statement (pdf) yesterday.

What they said: “By separating research and brokerage brands, we are transforming researchfrom being perceived as a cost center into a dynamic, independent entity that delivers high-quality, previously inaccessible information in a user-friendly manner, while ensuring there is no conflict of interest and maintaining the integrity and reliability of our recommendations,” head of fundamental research at Thndr Securities Amr Elalfy said.

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