Pearson and Village Capital invest $150k in Experifun and Sudiksha Knowledge Solutions

The Pearson Affordable Learning Fund and Village Capital initiated a campaign earlier in July via which they were two invest $150,000 in Indian education companies (Pearson launched the Affordable Learning Fund last July with $15 million capital to invest in low-cost private schools and other affordable educational solutions). The program has concluded and the two companies who have raised investment are:Experifun and Sudiksha Knowledge Solutions. Both the companies have received $75,000 each to scale up their businesses.

Experifun is a Bangalore based company that helps science teachers bring their subject to life by providing them with kits and activities to conduct classroom experiments. Founded by Vivek Pandey, Rakesh Kumar and Rashmi Singh, Experifun has started rolling out the kits to schools and with this funding, they'll have the bandwidth to scale it further.

Sudiksha is also in a similar domain and is a social laboratory that works towards designing, training and researching various facets of education. They aim at finding practical solutions to improve the overall quality of educational standards by maintaining low cost Indian schools at the urban and rural levels. Sudiksha presently owns and manages 18 schools in Andhra Pradesh, 12 are in Hyderabad and 6 in rural Andhra Pradesh.

The company has been founded by Naveen Kumar, Nimisha Mittal and Vanaja Dollu. Pearson’s executive director of the Affordable Learning Fund, Katelyn Donnelly says, “These inspiring entrepreneurs are excellent examples of the innovations desperately needed to improve access to, and quality of, education for low-income learners around the world. Both Experifun and Sudiksha have established strong traction with customers and shown early promise to transform learning outcomes and scale quickly."

Education is one of the biggest sectors in India along with healthcare where startups can come in and create an impact. There are challenges in the space but the opportunities they hold to bring about a change are immense. Specifically for education startups, we at YourStory have launched EduStars, a program to recognize upcoming startups in the space. EduStars is in its second edition now and is organized in association with Intel and Accel Partners.

The event is on 6th December, 2013 and you can know more about it on the EduStars website.