VC investors commit to Indian online education start-ups
Two Indian online education start-ups have received venture capital funding, with Toppr raising a $10 million round led by Fidelity Growth Partners and Vedantu attracting $5 million in Series A funding from Accel Partners and Tiger Global.
Vedantu, which provides one-on-one online tutoring and collaboration, will use its new capital to expand its team, according to a release. The company provides tutoring sessions for students from grades 6 through 12, in subjects ranging from regular school courses to specific exam preparation.
Founded in 2014, Vedantu is the second educational start-up for its founders. Their last company, the north India-focused test preparation company Lakshya, was sold to online tutoring center MT Educare in 2012. Vedantu has over 1,000 students and employs more than 100 teachers.
Toppr, unlike Vedantu, focuses specifically on preparation for university entrance exams, particularly engineering and medical schools. It was founded in 2013 as a supplement to offline tutoring, according to a TechCrunch article cited by Toppr. Currently it has 170,000 subscribers. The company recently acquired competitor EasyPrep, and has additional acquisitions planned for later this year.
Helion Ventures and SAIF Partners also participated in Toppr's financing round. The two firms provided $2 million in Series A funding to the company last year.
India has 250 million K-12 students, and 80 million of them are currently taking some form of outside tutoring. This creates an appealing market both for start-ups that aim to supplement in-person tutoring sessions, like Toppr, and those that aim to replace them, like Vedantu.
Other PE-backed competitors in the sector include Embibe, a test-prep platform that raised $4 million in 2014 from Lightbox Ventures and Kalaari Capital.
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