Edtech Startup Toppr Raises $35 Mn from Kaizen PE, Alteria and Brand Capital
After e-commerce boom its Edtech startups in India that are having a good times when it comes to raising the massive capital, as after couple of whopping fund raises by Byju’s and recently becoming the biggest edtech firm in the world, an another startup firm in edtech space, Toppr, has raised an impressive $35 million in Series D round of funding led by education-focused investor Kaizen Private Equity, venture debt firm Alteria Capital and Brand Capital, the investment arm of Times Group media house.
Toppr’s existing VC investors Eight Roads Ventures, Helion Ventures and SAIF Partners also participated in this round.
So far, Toppr has raised a total of $58 million in funding over nine rounds including this one. Additionally, Toppr is talking to investors to raise about $80-$100 million more.
The freshly raised funds will primarily be used for branding in order to compete with other players especially Byju’s. The funds will also be used for product development, increasing engagement and investing in technology Post this funding, the valuation of Toppr is expected to be between $150 million and $200 million.
Founded in 2013 by Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti, Toppr.com is an online preparation platform for entrance exams in India. It claims to have changed how students prepare for competitive exams in India.
Despite the rigorous brand marketing by Byju’s, Toppr have been able to get 6 million downloads and one million monthly active users, says Zishaan Hayath, CEO & co-founder of Toppr. The Mumbai-based startup now aims to increase its marketshare, especially among students in lower grades.
One of Toppr’s key offerings is an Artificial Intelligence-backed chat application for students that uses natural language processing for immediate responses. Toppr also has a team of 29,000 online tutors.
Toppr co-founder Zishaan Hayath is an angel investor himself, and has invested in quite a few tech startups such as Ola, Zo Rooms, Squadrun, Edu4Share, Pickingo and DoorMint.
Besides Byju’s massive $540 million fund raise, Reliance Industries had also announced that it will invest $180 million in Embibe.
Just Yesterday, Bengaluru Based Edtech startup DataTrained raised second round of funding of Rs. 12 Crore (~ US $1.68 million) from a pool of 3 HNIs. Last week, Gurugram-based EdTech startup PlanetSpark had raised ₹1.6 crore funding from FIITJEE, India’s leading education company.
Prior to that, in last month, AI-led Edtech startup Genius Corner raised angel funding of Rs 2 Crore from Ranbir Singh, Mahesh Mohta and Lakshmikantan Sundereswaran, This was followed by funding of Perspectico, a Delhi-based career-tech platform, raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from SSCBS Innovation & Incubation Foundation of government of Delhi.
Source: IndianWeb2
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