Kortext hires new recruits to drive international growth

UK digital textbook platform Kortext has made two new senior appointments and is doubling the size of its development team in anticipation of "three-four times year-on-year growth" through international expansion.

The Bournemouth-based business has doubled the size of its product development team from 17 to 35 in the space of a year, and says it is looking in particular to expand internationally by negotiating contracts with universities in Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region, while continuing to build its university-wide partnerships in the UK.

It has hired two new senior colleagues to the team, Scott Gibbens and Jason Beech, to lead on its "learning analytics solutions" and build on publisher and stakeholder relationships.

Gibbens, who was a senior services manager at a higher eductation not-for-profit organisation for digital services, Jisc, has joined Kortext as analytics and engagement manager to develop Kortext's analytics solutions and help support its university customers. A qualified librarian, he has been responsible for the re-launch of the new historical texts and journal archives services widely used by UK universities, and, prior to this, worked in university and NHS libraries, as well as selling e-books for Hammicks and Coutts Library Services.

Beech, who previously worked as a sales and marketing director at Coutts, has been appointed to the position of channel director to work with key publishing partners, such as Pearson, Cengage and McGraw Hill, on their direct sales to students and universities. He will also help develop strategic partnerships across the industry.

Kortext said this "next phase of growth" will focus on its international development in conjunction with its key commercial partners, Microsoft and Samsung, with whom Kortext works closely on global learning solutions. Kortext teamed up with Microsoft in November 2015 to give students and education-providers “unparalleled”, easy access to thousands of textbooks, and before that partnered with Samsung in March 2014. Kortext is currently used by more than 40 UK universities to deliver textbook solutions to their students.

Founder and c.e.o. of Kortext, James Gray, said: “I’m delighted to welcome so much new talent to the Kortext team. We are in a strong position to continue delivering our vision of moving learning online and enabling more students to benefit from the tools available to them when content is available in a digital format.

“We’ve experienced incredible growth over the past three years and are now in an exciting phase of international expansion, which will see us take Kortext’s digital textbook and learning platform global. We have a real opportunity to transform higher education, making it more immersive, collaborative and most importantly, more accessible. It’s great to have a team that is so passionate about helping students achieve more through access to interactive learning content and learning analytics which will ultimately keep students and academics connected and engaged.”