[Funding alert] Edtech startup Swiflearn raises $3M in pre-Series A from Stellaris, Venture Highway

Swiflearn — a Gurugram-based edtech startup — on Monday said it raised $3 million in pre-Series A round led by Stellaris Venture Partners, Venture Highway, and notable angels such as Varun Alagh (Founder, Mamaearth), Ramakant Sharma (Founder, Livspace), and Alok Mittal (Founder, Indifi).

Rahul Chowdhri and Priya Mohan, representatives from Stellaris Venture Partners and Venture Highway, respectively, will be supporting the startup in its journey.

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The startup added that it will use the funds to expand its team, technology enhancement, and gain traction in the K-10 education sector. According to the co-founders, Swiflearn aims to make learning interesting, scalable, and affordable for all.

Founded in 2019 by Abhinav Agarwal and Anand Bakode, Swiflearn is a full-stack online platform for academic courses for students, which aims to provide the best possible personalised learning experience to each student from India’s highest quality teachers.

With its two-way interactive format classes, the startup ensures that no more than six students are present in a class. In fact, the teachers use the in-house developed content, pedagogy, testing tools, video conferencing solutions, interactive games, and learning tracking mechanisms to deliver lessons.

"With our training capabilities, we can deliver courses such as Vedic Maths, Abacus, and Money Education, which are very unique,” Co-founder Anand Bakode said.

Speaking about the growth, Abhinav Agarwal, Co-founder, Swiflearn, says, “We have been growing at more than 100 percent month-on-month since the beginning of the school year in March 2021, and closed May with Rs 18 crore ARR.”

The startup had earlier raised Rs 7.35 crore in December 2019 from Stellaris Partners, Venture Highway, and Utsav Somani of Angel List India.

Rahul Chowdhri, Partner at Stellaris Ventures, said, “While several edtech companies are doing well for test prep or higher education space, none of them has been able to generate learning level outcomes for school-going children. The founding team comes with an education background and running a highly operational intensity business, which convinced us to back them early on.”

Rahul also explained Swiflearn’s small-batch, live teaching model with in-house pedagogy not only ensures student learning but also high engagement.

Priya Mohan, Partner at Venture Highway, added, “In my view, concept reinforcement by a teacher-facilitator followed by supervised revision and practice will remain key for K-12 students. Swiflearn’s value proposition rests in its strong teacher supply supported by solid pedagogy and teaching frameworks, thereby allowing parents/students to see measurable progress, which is often difficult to measure in edtech.”