AI startup Leverage Edu raises $1 M from Blume Ventures and DSG Partners

Leverage Edu, an AI-enabled marketplace, which helps students with higher education and career growth plans, has raised $1 million in pre-series A round of funding led by DSG Consumer Partners and Blume Ventures. This is the second round of financing post a seed round raised late last year.

Founded in early 2017 by Akshay Chaturvedi and Rajiv Ganjoo, Leverage Edu's online platform helps students accelerate their careers through mentorship and provides college admissions guidance. They also have programmes to help get first-job ready, as well as one-to-one virtual career advisory for multiple career streams.

“Over the last 12 months, we have grown from a college admissions platform to a full-stack career growth company, that helps students starting from the eighth grade with mentorship and assessments, moves to high schoolers and college goers applying to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and goes right up to young professionals seeking high-end career advice from best-matched experts on our marketplace,” Akshay has said in a press release.

Leverage Edu’s AI tool helps students identify what programme or college they are best suited for, and then matches them to a mentor for virtual mentorship sessions.

The platform brings together more than 700 mentors from universities like Stanford, Oxford, MIT, Yale, Harvard, and has worked in Goldman Sachs, Apple, Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Amazon, Facebook, Tesla, and more. It presently has offices in Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai.

Deepak I Shahdadpuri, Managing Director, DSG Consumer Partners said about the development, “We are bullish on the education sector globally, and in India. There is a need in the market to help students apply to better quality global education institutions, and to advise students on their careers, to help them get better jobs. Leverage Edu aims to address these needs, providing relevant, personalised advice to students and young professionals.”

Leverage Edu has now also ventured into helping students with exclusive scholarships, industry-best educational loans, help on housing, forex/VISA, and more, through multiple global partnerships.

Sajith Pai of Blume Ventures added, “College admissions, especially international college admissions and adjacent spaces are a fragmented and under-served market. As India gets richer, we are likely to see an exponential growth in demand for international and new age higher education institutions. Leverage Edu’s smart use of tech, its proprietary mentorship platform, and aggression will help them tap this demand effectively.”