Ed-tech startup ConveGenius raises Rs 6 cr funding from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
India and Singapore-based ed-tech startup ConveGenius received funding to the tune of Rs 6 crore in an equity investment from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and will use the capital to provide an engaging and impactful education for the masses.
Founded in 2013 by Jairaj Bhattacharya and Shashank Pandey, ConveGenius aims at making learning affordable, fun and rewarding. ConveGenius curates content from multiple companies like Mexus Education (Iken), StoryWeaver from Pratham Books, and Chipper Sage. The company uses assessments and data analytics tools to track the progress being made by students in real-time, and provide them with personalised learning paths with the most relevant content.
The company caters to the K-12 space in India, and had been backed by Ashish Gupta, Founder and trustee of Ashoka University, in their seed and angel rounds, apart from other angel investors from Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.
The tablet and mobile-based startup had raised Rs 2 crore in a pre-series A round last year, and had also secured an angel round of funding to the tune of $100,000 in 2014.
Commenting on this funding round, Jairaj Bhattacharya, co-founder and CEO of ConveGenius, said,
We are excited to be backed by MSDF in our endeavour to reach 3 million children across India and other emerging markets by 2020, thus working towards bridging the gap between the availability and accessibility of good quality educational content. With the current investment, we seek to scale our operations, build on our existing archive of educational content by aggregating more exciting content providers across various languages, and further strengthen our technology for self-learning by building in intelligence and Adaptivity on the CONVEGENIUS Slate platform.
Overview on the edutainment segment
With the rise in smartphone users, such solutions will likely see more adaptability. The market size of edutainment-based products in India is said to have crossed $6 billion. Given that the number of smartphone and tablet users will soar in the next few years, scope and opportunity in the edutainment segment is humungous, and with the new interactive education style, such startups will definitely witness growth.
Vedantu, BYJU, Simplilearn, Embibe, Toppr and EduKart are a few key players in the ed-tech segment, but no dominant player has emerged so far; this is particularly true in the edutainment space, which has ample scope and unexplored opportunities.