[Funding alert] FrontRow raises $14M in Series A led by Eight Roads Ventures and GSV

Learning and community platform FrontRow has announced that it has raised $14 million in Series A round led by Eight Roads Ventures and GSV, with participation from existing investors Lightspeed and Elevation Capital. The round also saw participation from angels such as Vishal Dhadlani, Raftaar, Kunal Shah, Gaurav Munjal, Farid Ahsan, and multiple leaders across the startup and entertainment world. 

Launched just nine months ago by Shubhadit Sharma, Mikhil Raj, and Ishaan Preet Singh, the startup said it has scaled to 50K+ paid learners across 2,000+ cities across the world, with users spending over a million hours learning on FrontRow. The startup had earlier raised a $3.2 million seed round led by Lightspeed, Elevation, and Deepika Padukone’s Family Office.

According to the press statement, the startup plans to use the funds to scale to 10+ categories and 300+ courses over the next year.

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Additionally, talking about their vision, Ishaan Singh, Co-founder, FrontRow, said, they’ll be investing heavily on team and product.

“Our goal is to help you learn in the best way possible, across categories and mediums. The next decade will see new paradigms of learning, built online first, and better than offline! For this, we're building a new model of community and cohort led learning that is a fundamental evolution of edtech.”

Talking about his investment in FrontRow, Vishal Dhadlani said, “Edtech is something I'm passionate about, both as a musician who appreciates the wider-access it provides to real and useful knowledge and content, as well as an investor who sees the strength of the business model. FrontRow is clearly the best online platform to learn and practice music. That alone is enough reason for me to want to be a part of it.”

Aditya Systla, Partner, Eight Roads Ventures, said, “As investors, we’ve been a big champion of the role technology will play in disrupting multiple sectors, including education. We believe the market is highly under-served with strong secular trends in digital adoption of non-academic learning driven by limited availability of qualified instructors, flexibility in scheduling and lack of access to structured curriculum. Ishaan, Mikhil Shubhadit, and the team at FrontRow have taken the ‘pursuit of passion’ digital, at a time when few others have in India. We are very excited to back one of the market leading companies focused on non-academic learning.”

Chirag Chadha, Vice President at Elevation Capital said, “Frontrow has uncovered a unique approach to go after its mission of enabling Indians to learn and follow their passion. As Day 0 investors in the company, we have been amazed to see the response and love for the product, and the way in which the team has iterated to make this happen. This makes us super excited to extend our commitment in this round.”

"FrontRow is the pioneer of the passion economy in India, powering skills, knowledge and giving life to the aspirations of potential hundreds of millions of students across the country from all walks of life. We're proud to have partnered with the FrontRow team since their inception and are excited about the next phase of execution of the FrontRow vision this round unlocks", added Akshay Bhushan, Partner, Lightspeed.