How it all began

Lingio started off as a volunteer project in summer 2015 in response to the wave of refugees arriving in Sweden at the time.

Three ex-colleagues from Spotify, EA Games and MTG were keen to contribute and help the newcomers integrate into Swedish society and the labor market more quickly – so they developed an app that was specifically aimed at helping new arrivals learn Swedish.

The original app with courses in general Swedish has since been procured by the County Administrative Boards of Sweden and is still recommended for all asylum seekers arriving in Sweden.

The desire to empower non-natives with language, education and work in order to expedite the integration process is still strong, and this has been a major factor in the growth of what was once a volunteer project into a company that provides language courses for 28 different professions with customers all over Sweden.

There are now 20 of us working with everything from web development to sound production, teaching, translation and partnerships. We believe very strongly that language is a key to successful integration. It doesn’t need to be an obstacle to finding a job or developing at work.

We also believe that language learning should be fun, because then you practice more and learn more quickly. This is why we use AI, gamification and individual coaching to achieve the optimum results for our course participants.

The courses are created by our team of former SFI teachers, educators, vocational teachers and journalists, who ensure that the content is interesting, relevant and educational. The team has extensive experience of language teaching, and the deep expertise of its members is matched with the very latest tech to facilitate language learning in a fun and effective way.