Schoolguru Eduserve Pvt. Ltd, a technology-led specialized academic services organization, has raised $3 million (about Rs.20 crore) in a Series A funding led by high net-worth investors (HNIs) from India and the US.
The investment will be used for enhancement of its technology platform, the company said in a statement.This was first reported by The Economic Times on Wednesday.
Schoolguru, which helps universities launch, run and manage Information and communications technology-enabled (ICT) online programmes, said that the new funding will also be used to enhance its content library. Kunal Kumthekar and Ravi Saxena, directors, Cipher-Plexus Capital Advisors, were the exclusive advisors to the transaction, the company said.
The platform was launched in 2012 by Shantanu Rooj, Ravi Rangan and Anil Bhat to help universities offer e-learning services to students.
The company also services 12 government universities to help manage their online course delivery programmes.
“We have plans to offer services of our platform not only to the ODL (open and distance learning) students but also to the students enrolling for traditional classroom education and with the technology support we would like bring a change in the classroom education in several remote areas of the country,” said Rooj, chief executive officer and co-founder of the company.
The platform helps students from remote and rural areas to learn online as well using smartphones. The company currently covers 170 graduation and post-graduation programs and services around 150,000 students in nine major regional languages, Schoolguru said.
Education technology, which has been gaining significance over the last couple of years, got a boost with the government’s Digital India initiative.
The market size for multimedia and ICT in India was around $2 billion and is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 18% to touch around $3 billion by 2017, according to research and consultancy firm Kaizen Institute Consulting Group Ltd. According to its classification, there is core education which comprises fundamental education that culminates in a degree (K-12, undergraduate etc); parallel education which looks to fill the gap in core education with vocational training, tutoring etc; and ancillary education which includes products and services supplied to companies in the core and parallel segments such as ICT and multimedia.
Schoolguru will look to partner with nearly 30 Indian universities, targeting over one million students within the next couple of years. The company will also look to expand its operations to universities from regions such as South East Asia and countries in Africa.
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