Education marketplace TomoClases expands to Mexico and eyes Latin America

Offline classes and workshops marketplace TomoClases is now available in Mexico as tomoclases.mx, the Start-Up Chile alum announced during TNW Conference Latin America’s Startup Battle last month. In addition, its platform now lets users advertise and find online courses.

While TomoClases is similar to Skillshare in many aspects, its ambition goes well beyond cloning a successful business model. As a matter of fact, its goal is to make an impact on education across Latin America, its CEO Güimar Vaca Sittic explains:

“Countries such as Argentina and Brazil have a strong culture in terms of hiring tutors for children. Moreover, people are constantly learning something new ranging from a new sport or an eccentric hobby. Hence, Tomo Clases will have a big impact in this countries in 2012 – we shorten the gap between professors and students from any field, and also encourage everybody to become a professor by teaching what they know.”

Vaca Sittic is not a newcomer in the startup space – previously co-founder of the restaurant booking website CenaPlus, he sold it to its competitor Restorando in December 2011. As you may remember, we listed Restorando as one of the ten most promising Latin American startups in 2011 and reported that it had raised $3.2 million in funding last February.

Both Vaca Sittic and his CTO Eric Denovitzer have studied in well-known US universities – respectively the University of Chicago and Princeton. Yet, TomoClases is very much a Latin American company. After its graduation pitch during Start-Up Chile’s Demo Day last week, it is now about to join the Argentine accelerator NXTP Labs‘ upcoming class.

Since its beta launch in Chile last April, 600 classes have been created on TomoClases, which currently boasts 1,250 registered users. The startup is now in the process of raising a $300,000 round to continue its expansion across Latin America and help it scale. Following its launch in Mexico, it plans to roll out its service in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia next October, and reach the 10,000 classes milestone by the end of the year.