One of our longest standing investments accelerates US expansion
Punakaiki Fund has led a $2m growth investment in Orah, the student safety company, and one of our longstanding portfolio investments.
We first invested in Orah in 2014 and again in 2021, and are proud to be alongside exceptional tech backers, including Bruce Gordon, Peter Huljich, Aaron Bhatnagar and Vaughan Fergusson.
Orah is building software that supports duty of care in schools. It started with boarding school management, where accountability matters every day, and it has expanded into a broader K-12 school safety platform.
In 2024 Orah appointed new CEO Matt Varley to help execute a renewed focus on North American independent schools. The results are outstanding – Orah has delivered record year-on-year growth in annual recurring revenue.
Their exceptional growth across North America and beyond reflects the calibre of their product and team.
“What’s so impressive is that Orah didn’t even really need the capital. Their use of AI across the business has unlocked a level of efficiency rarely seen at this stage. But the capital will accelerate their success.”
AI integration and growth
Next for them is an agentic system that acts on their data, autonomously coordinating student safety, triggering intervention workflows, and building the institutional knowledge layer that independent schools have never had.
Nadine Hill, partner at 2040 Ventures, has been instrumental to this deal and we’re grateful for her ongoing belief in Orah and with Punakaiki Fund’s mission to stay with companies as they grow.
She says: “What’s so impressive is that Orah didn’t even really need the capital. Their use of AI across the business has unlocked a level of efficiency rarely seen at this stage. But the capital will accelerate their success.”
This investment is designed to support the next phase of growth, with a particular focus on:
- expanding Orah’s presence in the United States and Canada within the K-12 school safety market
- continuing to strengthen Orah’s global position in boarding school software
- accelerating product development, including work that uses AI to improve workflows for school staff.
In practice, that means helping schools respond faster in high-stakes moments, while also improving the everyday operational systems that keep students safe and supported.
Strong partnerships, deeper integrations
A key part of Orah’s value is how well it integrates with the tools schools already use. Orah has strategic partnerships with leading student information systems, including Blackbaud, Veracross, and FACTS, plus integrations with emergency notification platforms such as Informacast. This helps schools connect data flows across systems, and gives staff a clearer, more usable picture of what is happening across campus.
We have backed Orah for a long time, and we are proud to continue that partnership as the team scales. They are ambitious, disciplined, and focused on an outcome that matters: helping schools make sure every student is accounted for and safe.
See the Orah media release here.