[Funding alert] Career counselling startup iDreamCareer raises Pre-Series A round from Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS

iDreamCareer (iDC), a Delhi-based career counselling startup, on Wednesday announced it has raised an undisclosed Pre-Series A funding from US-based education and skilling sector focused impact investor Gray Matters Capital.

The funds raised will be utilised by iDC to strengthen its online platform’s technology and to build automated data-driven career planning tools based on its huge data and content on careers; besides expanding to more private schools in India and the Middle East. 

Commenting on the investment, Srinita Mitra, Portfolio Manager, Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS, said,

“The funding made by our edLABS initiative is aimed at improving learning outcomes of educational courses by mapping student abilities with courses suitable for them; which in-turn would help in boosting their future employability prospects." 

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Productising a career assessment, planning & counseling service - iDreamCareer

Ever since its inception in 2013, iDC claims to have been helping more than 2.5 million students annually from Class VIII to XII in schools and also in undergraduate colleges in India every year in choosing the right career. 

iDC’s flagship Psychometric Assessment tool helps students mapping their abilities, personality traits as well as areas of interest to discover their inner potential while its Career Planner tool helps in aligning this potential with suitable career options. It has developed a proprietary career guidance content on 460+ careers, 25,500 specialisation tracks, 17,000+ colleges, 1,049 entrance exams, and 960+ scholarships. 

Speaking about the fund raise, Ayush Bansal, Founder and CEO, iDreamCareer, said, 

"Our vision at iDreamCareer is to provide unbiased career guidance to students irrespective of their socio-economic background and we have successfully validated our business model in the past few years. The funding round will help us to further establish high-end technology products in the space of career guidance for millions of students. This round will help us in setting up the growth phase for the company."

iDC claims to be India's first multilingual career guidance platform, which is now available in five regional languages. 

According to the company, its career counselling programmes are being delivered in 6700+ schools across India and the Middle East. It has also empowered over 684 professionals to become highly skilled career counsellors in 84 Indian districts and six countries through the iDreamCareer certification programme where training is imparted via physical training programmes, online webinars, forums, and a counselling management system.

The company said its operational revenue grew by 3.3x in FY'19, and it is estimated to grow further by 3.5x in FY'20. It has achieved an EBITDA margin of 15 percent in FY'19. This year, iDC expects over five million students to use its platform. 

“Our next long-term plan is to launch an array of ecosystem products, which can add on to our existing products of career guidance. We will be looking to drive a subscription-based B2C product on our mobile app, which is due to launch in September 2019,” adds Bansal.

iDC had earlier raised funds from former PepsiCo director GK Sinha in 2013, ah! Ventures in 2015 with investors Mohit Satyanand, Neeraj Gambhir, Vivek Joshi Indian Design Group and others, and from Times Group’s Brand Capital in 2016.

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

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