This Week in Deals — June 2021(Part 2)

Between June 15, 2021 and June 30, 2021, we saw eleven companies in the Indian EdTech space getting funded or acquired. Companies that got funded came from diverse segments such as Upskilling/Reskilling, Early Education, K-12, Pre-School, and B2B solutions.

Who Got a Slice?

• MSMEx (Pre-Series A, $1 million): Founded in 2019, MSMEx is an upskilling platform for SMB owners. They connect with business experts, and learn business best practices in a cost-effective and efficient manner. Razorpay and TNF Investments co-led the round.
  MSMEx is a very interesting play, serving a potential market of 10 million SME enterprise in India, where learning has primarily been “take it as it comes”.
• Skillmatics (Series A, $6 million): Skillmatics offers learning resources, educational games, and STEM toys for early education. Sequoia Capital India led the round, with participation from Jalaj Dani Family Office and existing angel investors.
• Byju’s(Series F, $50 million): BYJU’S develops personalized learning programs for K-12 students. Byju’s created a K-12 learning app which offers learning programmes for students in classes 4–12 (K-12) and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT. India Infoline Finance (IIFL Finance) and Maitri Edtech participated in the round.
• MicroDegree (Growth, Undisclosed): MicroDegree offers tech upskilling courses in multiple vernaculars. The undisclosed round was led by Siddharth H Somaiya and RIIDL.
• Saarthi Pedagogy (Seed, $940K): Founded in 2015, provides academic content (Textbook, worksheet, academic publications), learning management system, and pedagogy to partner schools. The round was led by Ecosystem Ventures, with participation from LetsVenture, JITO Angel Network, and other angels.
  The problem with most solutions is that a lot of schools cannot write the checks to avail such services, while the K-12 market in India is huge. Saarthi has served about 1,000 schools so far, which may not necessarily represent the number of users currently. If Saarthi can overcome the problem of large churn in such businesses (as schools drop off such programs if they can’t afford it), then we might have a big-time competitor in the market.
• Classplus (Series C, $65 million): Classplus is a mobile-first SaaS platform that enables private coaching institutes and their tutors to streamline their content distribution, payments, communication, and online assessments through an app. The round led was led by Tiger Global, GSV Ventures, with participation from Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), Blume Ventures and RTP Global.
• Navars (Growth, Undisclosed): Founded in 2019, Navars provides education to K12 students on astronomy education, and has served over 800 schools & 300K students across 13 countries. FAAD Network invested in the round.
• Edmingle (Seed, $300K): Edmingle enables tutors to launch branded online teaching academy websites and mobile apps. The round was led by SucSEED Ventures, Mumbai Angels and other angels.
• Airblack (Series A, $5.2 million): Airblack helps people upskill and become micro-entrepreneurs in the beauty skilling market through “do-it-together” (DIT) courses. The $5.2 million funding was co-led by Info Edge Ventures and Elevation Capital with participation from Atelier Ventures, Better Capital and other angels.
• Quizizz (Series A, $12.5 million): Quizizz is a gamified quizzing and interactive lessons platform, that generates instant student feedback. Tiger Global Management led the round, with participation from Nexus Venture Partners, GSV Ventures, and Eight Roads Ventures, Jerry Yang.
• Nalanda Learning Systems (Growth, $5.4 million): Nalanda Learning Systems, operates ‘Little Laureates’ pre-schools across eastern India. Aavishkaar Capital invested in the company.

Globally, companies which received funding included Ringle (One-on-One tutoring), ApplyBoard (College Applications Support), Lingokids (Early Education), GoStudent (One-on-one tutoring) Merlyn Mind (Digital Classroom Assistant), Edunation (Digital school and learning management system), edX (Upskilling platform), and Mathpresso (K-12 learning).

Watch this space for more on Education, EdTech, and everything in between.