RefME Aims to Take the Search out of Research; Announces $5M in Seed Funding

NEW YORK and LONDON, April 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- RefME, the free tool to generate citations, reference lists and bibliographies in a single click, today announced it has secured a $5 million seed funding round. GEMS Global, the Varkey Group owned, largest private K-12 education company in the world, led the round with $4 million in financing. RefME is interested in vertical search and fueling the knowledge economy. The company will use the funding to invest in its engineering and data teams, and to scale its global presence.

Available at RefME.com or via iOS and Android apps, RefME allows students and researchers to create citations and bibliographies in a matter of seconds. Students simply scan book and journal barcodes using their smartphone or use the online search feature to reference anything in a click. It automates citations in more than 7,000 academic formats, and saves and syncs the reference in the cloud, enabling students to manage their work across multiple devices. View a video demo of how RefME works at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgnO09KBdpg.

"RefME has huge potential to disrupt education, publishing and ultimately search as well. RefME learns what students and researchers all around the world discover and has the power to share this information. RefME has built a tool that helps validate information and ultimately shows where you've found knowledge. This is as important to education as it is to the Web itself, and that is very compelling!" said Sunny Varkey, renowned education entrepreneur and Group Chairman and Founder of GEMS Education and Founder of Varkey Foundation.

Launched in January 2014, RefME is growing by an average of 10,000 new users every day. The platform has gained more than 800,000 users in less than a year – overtaking Spotify and eBay in the download charts and growing faster than Twitter and Pinterest did in their first years.

RefME's technology is not only winning over students, but academics as well. Universities spend millions each year on textbooks, but currently have no way to see which sources are cited in students' work. RefME provides this valuable information for the first time removing the guesswork out of which sources are most useful to students.

"We set out to create a world-class tool that automates an important, albeit time-consuming, problem that 150 million students face globally," said Tom Hatton, CEO and co-founder of RefME. "We've been blown away by the uptake of RefME, but what truly excites us is what we're learning from our data, and the enormous potential our platform has moving forward. This knowledge, coupled with the seed funding, will allow us to expand globally and ultimately discover the true value of the RefME platform."

RefME has a team of 36 working from its London offices, made up of former Morgan Stanley, Google, and Apple employees, as well as an ex-NASA data scientist. The company has also attracted a strong advisory board from two of the largest edtech companies in the world, and counts Will Murray, Chief Product Officer of iParadigm (Turnitin), and Sam Weber, Head of International Business Development for Blackboard among its advisors. RefME was also selected by the London Mayor's Office and UKTI (U.K. Trade and Investment) for a trade mission to the U.S., and was recently named a Startup of the Year by The Guardian.

About RefME      
RefME (https://refme.com) is a free tool to generate citations, reference lists, and bibliographies in a single click. Supporting over 7,000 referencing styles, more than 800,000 students have created 10 million citations, saving time and marks by using RefME. Available online at www.refme.com or via native iOS and Android apps, RefME allows students to scan book and journal barcodes and very quickly source and insert reference citations. RefME saves and syncs in the cloud enabling students to manage all of their work across multiple devices from anywhere at any time. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in London, RefME is a privately held company backed by Varkey GEMS Education, the largest private K – 12 education company in the world. Read our blog, follow us on Twitter @GetRefME and like us on Facebook.       

About Varkey GEMS Foundation   
GEMS Education is a pioneering education company. Through our schools, consulting practice and our charitable foundation we are advancing education for all.  Every day in our schools around the world, we prepare 140,000 children of all ages for real world success. Achieved through the passion of over 13,000 education professional and staff from 115 countries. We are a catalyst and delivery partner. We work with governments, donor agencies and private clients to improve education systems, and provide vital training for young people in an increasingly competitive world. Through the Varkey Foundation, we campaign for, and support initiatives that change lives through education.

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SOURCE RefME

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