[Funding alert] Edtech startup Habitat raises Rs 5 Cr from Unitus Ventures and Whiteboard Capital

Habitat, a social learning edtech platform for civil service aspirants, has raised Rs 5 crore in seed funding from Unitus Ventures and Whiteboard Capital.

“The funds raised will be utilised for tech development and team strengthening. We also aim to introduce other languages on the platform in addition to Hindi and English used at present. We are creating a communication-first paradigm in both arts and science, and our focus is on building a superior product that delivers desired outcomes for our users,” said Rohit Pande, CEO, Habitat.

Owned and operated by Apeirogon Technologies Pvt Ltd, Habitat caters to the government-exam sector with a deep focus on the civil service exams conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in which about 1.5 million aspirants compete for 1,000 seats.

Launched in 2016 by IIT friends Rohit Pande, Co-founder and CEO, and Shikhar Sachan, Co-founder and CPTO, Habitat addresses the gaps in enabling social learning for UPSC aspirants.

At present, the startup serves information-heavy exam segments (UPSC, State PCS, RBI, etc) using machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) for interactive learning. It also has plans to foray into the concept-heavy competitive exam segment – JEE, PMT and others.

"The future of learning is co-creation," added Rohit, “Habitat puts forth a communication-first pedagogy and centralises all learning activities like discussions, clearing doubts, study-plan iterations, on-demand lectures, notes sharing and assessments. Think of an organised cluster of WhatsApp or Telegram groups with your chosen mentor creating lectures on the go with you. That’s the learning “habitat” for you.”

Close to 60 percent of the registered users of Habitat are from Tier-II and Tier-III cities. According to the startup, about 70 percent of the users previously failed to manage or plan their exam preparations alongside work or studies. Habitat offers a practical, personalised and mentor-assisted approach through interactive chats, producing notably better scores on exams.

“Edtech is a burgeoning sector, with mobile-first learning leading the growth. Habitat engages learners like no other, producing measurable outcomes that play a profound role in motivating competitive aspirants,” said Will Poole, Managing Partner, Unitus Ventures.

This is the impact firm's second investment in the edtech space this year. Earlier this year, Unitus backed Masai School as part of the startup’s Series A round of funding.