Delhi-based AI-enabled edtech marketplace, Leverage Edu, has raised around ₹7 crores ($1 million) in pre-series A round of funding. The edtech startup plans to use the freshly raised capital to develop its platform for the next phase of growth. The company will be expanding its portfolio and presence across the country.
As a part of the funding deal, Chaitanya Rathi will join the board of the company as a director representing DSG Consumer Partners. As per Economic Times, Leverage Edu has raised around ₹9 crores ($1.3 million) in this pre-series A funding round. Mumba-based early-stage investor Blume Ventures also participated in the funding round.
Earlier in November 2017, the startup raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Innov8 Coworking founder Ritesh Malik, Indifi Technologies founder Alok Mittal, and several other angel investors. Prior to that in August 2017, the startup raised funds from HyperTrack CEO Kashyap Deorah, FlexiLoans co-founder Deepak Jain, and 7 other angel investors.
Founded by Chaturvedi and Rajiv Ganjoo, the startup’s online platform provides students with mentorship products, end-to-end college admission guidance, job and placement focused programs as well as one-to-one virtual career advisory services for various career streams.
“Over the last 12 months, we have grown from a college admissions platform to a full-stack career growth company, that helps students starting grade 8 with mentorship and assessments, moves to high schoolers and college goers applying to undergraduate and postgraduate programs, and goes right up to young professionals seeking high-end career advice from best-matched experts on our marketplace,” said Chaturvedi to Inc42.
Leverage Edu has a network of 700 mentors from several Ivy League universities. The mentors hold experience in working with prominent companies like Apple, Goldman Sachs and several other Fortune 500 companies. The startup has offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi.
Deepak I. Shahdadpuri, managing director, DSG Consumer Partners said “We are bullish on the education sector globally and in India. There is a need in the market to help students apply to better quality global education institutions, and to advise students on their careers, to help them get better jobs. Leverage Edu aims to address these needs, providing relevant, personalised advice to students and young professionals.”
Using artificial intelligence, Leverage Edu identifies the best programme or college for a student and then matches them to a valuable mentor. All the matching is carried out using the proprietary algorithm and hence a student gets the best-fitted mentor for virtual mentorship sessions. The startup also provides scholarships, educational loans, foreign housing assistance, forex, VISA and many more services through multiple partners all over the world.
Sajith Pai of Blume Ventures, said, “College admissions, especially international college admissions and adjacent spaces are a broken, fragmented and underserved market. As India gets richer, we are likely to see exponential growth in demand for international and new age higher ed institutions.”
The Indian digital education sector may witness an 800 per cent growth in the upcoming five years, a report by Google-KMPG suggests. Indian Didactics Association also published a report which says that the online education industry in the country will hit ₹13,000 crores by 2021 and the number of paid users in the segment will grow six times to reach 96 lakhs by 2021.
