Toppr raises Rs 45 Cr from SAIF Partners, Helion Ventures, and FIL Capital Management
Mumbai-based personalised e-learning solutions provider and online test preparation platform, Toppr, has raised $6.92 million (Rs 45 crore) in its Series B funding, led by its existing investors SAIF Partners, Helion Ventures, and FIL Capital Management.
Toppr had earlier raised $1.5 million seed fund in 2014 and $10 million in 2015. With the recent round of $7 million funds, the cumulative total is $18.5 million.
The company is pursuing aggressive expansion plans to reach out to students across the country and open centres in 30 cities by December 2017. Toppr projects 20x growth in its junior grades and 15x growth in its senior grades subscription by 2021, making it a company with over $500 million in revenue in the next four years.
It claims to have over two million registered users, and over one million app downloads.
Commenting on the funding round, Zishaan Hayath, CEO and Founder of Toppr, stated, “This is a second round of Series B funding by our existing investors. It is the reflection of our healthy unit economics and a reinforcement of the belief the investors have in us. This capital will be used to expand our geographical footprint and accelerate user acquisition. We expect this capital to take us to full profitability.”
Adding to this, he said, “With the adaptive approach we have towards education, wherein we take care of the entire exercise of learning for students, we would like to have various exam boards on the platform. Currently, we have eight classes and 9-10 boards, and we would like to increase it to 30.”
Toppr was founded in 2013 by two IIT alumni Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti. Based out of Mumbai, Toppr now has over 8,000 educators with distribution in 15 cities.
The learning app provides personalised learning for students and also enables them to study comprehensively for CBSE, ICSE, State Boards along with Olympiads, JEE, NEET, and other competitive exams.
The platform’s learning pieces include questions, solutions, concepts, and videos for the students signed up on the app. It claims to have cleared 11 lakh doubts, provided 90 lakh tests, with 11 crore practice questions answered.
Recently, Bengaluru-based online learning platforms, Byju’s and Unacademy, also raised funds.
Byju’s raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Tencent Holdings Limited. The company had also raised capital from IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, in December last year. It roped in $50 million in a round co-led by Mark Zuckerberg’s and Priscilla Chan’s investment arm, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), and Sequoia Capital in September, last year.
Unacademy had raised Series B funding of $11.5 million led by Sequoia India and SAIF Partners. At present, its combined funds stand at $17.5 million.
However, this year has not been great for edtech in terms of funding. According to YourStory data, since January, edtech startups have raised $94.21 million through 34 deals as against $107 million across 46 deals in the corresponding period last year.