Winter Capital leads $22.5m Series A for India's Uolo

Fellow Dubai-based investor Morphosis Venture Capital also participated. It follows a USD 2.7m seed round in 2020 from Blume and Omidyar Network. Purvi Capital, a US-based firm set up by Ravi Srivastava, a partner at Leo Capital, backed the company as early as 2016, according to AVCJ Research.

Uolo distinguishes itself with a B2B model versus more common consumer-facing edtech offerings. This involves providing online learning programmes that complement the existing curriculums to more than 8,000 schools with 3m students. The model is designed to reduce the cost burden on lower-income families in part by minimising customer acquisition advertising.

“The truth is that, after a few hours of play, rest and mandatory school homework, K-12 students do not have much time left,” CEO Pallav Pandey said.

“The edtech solutions need to build on top of 6 hours spent in school daily and magnify the outcomes by leveraging the smartphones available at home. The lack of alignment with school, together with exorbitant pricing is causing edtech companies to falter.”

India’s edtech industry is intensely competitive, having produced six unicorns to date by most estimates. However, in recent months, some large players 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.

Blume, which closed its fourth fund last week on USD 250m, is highly active in this space, having previously backed Classplus and Unacademy. The latter was valued at USD 3.4bn upon closing a USD 440m round last year. Unacademy has reflected some of the stresses on the industry in recent months, having laid off some 10% of its workforce.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• South Asia
• Consumer
• Media
• Early-stage
• India
• Blume Ventures
• Education
• TMT