[Funding alert] Mumbai-based edtech startup Expertrons raises $2.3M in Pre-Series A round

Expertrons, a professional growth focussed AI video bot startup, has raised $2.3 million in Pre-Series A funding from Venture Catalysts, Auxano Capital, Venture Garage, Yoga Capital, Ah!Ventures, Lead Angels, and Hyderabad Angels. 

Existing investors LetsVenture, Ivycap Ventures, IVS and Nikhil Vora (MD, Sixth Sense) also participated in the round as well, along with entrepreneurs like Bre Pettis, Co-founder of MakerBot (which was backed by Jeff Bezos and got acquired for half a billion dollars), and founder of Early Salary. 

Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, MD, Venture Catalyst, commented, “We live in a world of personalisation — where what we want to buy, eat or watch is recommended to us by our apps. Expertrons, being the Netflix for careers, recommend you the experts who are from a similar background and have already achieved your aspiring goals — who can handhold you to achieve the same."

Part of the fundraise will be invested in the startup's patent-pending video bot technology and recommendation engine to help aspirants find the right experts suitable to land them a dream opportunity.

Expertrons had earlier raised its seed round of $700,000 in April 2020, which saw participation from LetsVenture, Ivycap Ventures, Iceland Venture Studios (made a maiden investment in India with Expertrons; now plan an India-focused fund), and Nikhil Vora.

"For us, we keep looking for that 1 in 1000 team, which is thinking and executing non-linear market capture and growth. We saw the team deliver on this. One of the most exciting startups we have come across," Vivek of Venture Garage, said.

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Vikram Gupta, Founder and Managing Partner at IvyCap, said, 

“This team has seen super sonic growth since we last invested. Expertrons uses AI videobot technology for career guidance at a very large scale, a space that is more than ready for disruption.”

Expertrons, which witnessed a 70x growth over the last year, was founded by IIT-B Alumni and serial edtech entrepreneurs Jatin Solanki, who had earlier founded gamified edu-platform Stepapp EduisFun (backed by Amitabh Bacchan), and Vivek Gupta, who earlier founded Plancess a test-preparation company, which was acquired by a publicly listed education company.

Globally over a billion professionals look to switch their careers at least 5 to 7 times in their lifetime, and Expertrons aims to help them land their dream career through its expert and company network.

In India alone, there are over 35 million aspirants in colleges and universities looking for a dream job, internship or B-school and over 80 million white-collar professionals with less than three years of experience looking for career growth. 

“Professionals don’t want to click on ‘connect’ and wait or hope for someone to help them, or write an email and still wait for the right guidance. Neither do they want to read an anonymous career experience on Glassdoor, which may be from a different geography and not relevant to them. Video bots are the solution to the ever-growing digital dependence of the world and have applications in virtually every area of business. The demand is evident; we’ve been growing 50 percent m-o-m!“ said the founders.

Currently, Expertrons has over 5,000 experts sharing their video bot career experiences to land an opportunity with BCG, Google, Facebook, TCS, IIM, ISB, HBS and many more. Within 14 months of incorporation, the startup reached operational profitability, besides inspiring over 250,000 aspirants from its platform.

Sushanto Mitra, Founder and CEO, Lead Angels, added, 'We are delighted to be a part of the Expertrons journey, and expect to see it growing exponentially. An experts-driven approach for interview preparations combined with video- bots gives Expertrons an unfair advantage in the career counselling market providing non-linear scaling opportunity."