Google backs India edtech player Adda247

“If you have Google as an investor and mentor on your side, I think there cannot be a bigger confidence booster for any founder,” Anil Nagar, founder and CEO of Adda247, said in a social media post.

“I really feel lucky and humbled to have reached this stage in this hyper competitive environment where heavily funded competitors try all tricks to stop and derail you. I think we are now unstoppable. We will take quality education to every single Indian in the coming 10 years.”

Adda247 offers online career guidance and job exam preparation materials in at least 12 local languages primarily targeting lower-tier cities. Features include online live classes, on-demand video courses, mock tests, and e-books. It is touted as one of the largest content repositories in the country with more than 3m test questions and 50,000 hours of recorded video lectures.

There is a special focus on government jobs, a category the company estimates processes up to 100m applications a year through unorganised, significantly offline channels. The company claims that an industry survey in 2019 found 67% of government hires used its platform. This service was expanded last December with the acquisition of specialist operator Study IQ Education.

WestBridge Capital led the round with additional support from Info Edge Ventures, JM Financial, and Asha Impact. It follows a USD 20m round last year also led by WestBridge and featuring Info Edge, JM, and Asha. Info Edge and Asha provided a USD 6m round in 2019 alongside Sterlite Technologies, with the latter having reportedly backed the company since 2017.

Adda247 extends a string of Indian edtech investments for WestBridge, including Sunstone Eduversity in August, PhysicsWallah in June, and Vedantu Innovations in September last year. CapitalG, formerly known as Google Capital, was active in this space as recently as June with an investment in Cuemath. Google has also backed local edtech players Math Buddy, AntWak, and Virohan.

India’s edtech space is intensely competitive, having produced six unicorns to date by most estimates, including PhysicsWallah. However, in recent months, some large companies have been shedding staff, while several smaller ones have closed amidst a slowdown in funding, concerns about unsustainable business models, and post-pandemic screen fatigue.

The largest player is Byju’s, which raised a USD 800m pre-IPO round last March at a valuation of USD 22bn. The company has become a lightning rod for a groundswell of criticism that the industry has become bloated and over-commercialised. Earlier this week, it confirmed that 5% of staff, or some 2,500 people, would be laid off with a view to achieving profitability by March 2023.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Consumer
• Media
• Expansion
• India
• Google
• WestBridge Capital Partners
• Info Edge
• Education
• TMT