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Gurgaon-based vernacular edtech platform Vidyakul has announced the raise of $500K in bridge round funding.
Led by We Founder Circle (WFC) the round also saw the participation from other marquee investors including JITO Angel Network and Thinkuvate.
“Vidyakul that aimed at providing after-school e-learning for the state board students in vernacular languages. Will use the raised funds for hiring and for product development,” the statement said.
Vidyakul has attracted the marquee investors from the Gujarat state that applaud the success of the brand wherein, despite the pandemic it served more than 2 lakh students from the Gujarat region alone, through its platform. The brand has raised USD 500K in seed round early this year only.
Speaking on the investment in Vidyakul, Gaurav Singhvi Co-Founder of We Founder Circle, said, “We have started helping Vidyakul since 2019, and have invested $100K in Jan 2021 as we were very bullish on vernacular eLearning consumer growth. Since he launched the Gujarati language after starting with Hindi, a lot of our investors & local business community were keen to actively work with them. That is how with overwhelming demand from the Gujarati community we can reinvest $250K in this round again. This speaks volumes about the potential of Vidyakul and the strategic investor base of the WFC community.”
“EdTech industry has grown multifold in the last one year itself. In India, the industry holds a lot of scopes, and Vidyakul’s model is aptly designed to cater to the requirements of the population that form the majority. The unique approach to deliver quality education in vernacular languages makes it a go-to platform for students from every region in India. In 2017 the number of regional language internet users surpassed English-speaking users and this number will only grow further, and vernacular-based models will gain more relevance,” Neeraj Tyagi- Co-Founder & CEO, We Founder Circle said.
Commenting on the fundraise, Tarun Saini, Founder of Vidyakul said, “We have been getting overwhelming responses from students from across the states. With the growing internet penetration, the scope of digital learning has widened, and we are exploring the possibilities of the same. E-learning can address long-standing challenges of – access to quality education, reaching remotest of the areas, student-teacher ratio, etc. We, on top of that, have made it easier for students by helping them understand concepts in their language. So far, we are providing courses for 10 boards, and we plan to add more 3 languages and add courses for 3 state boards by the end of this fiscal.”
In a statement issued, Sunil Kumar Singhvi, Vice Chairman of JITO Angel Network said, “Rural education in India has been the prime focus of the government. Vidyakul majorly focuses on the BHARAT with a huge content bank of ~100k+ video lectures covering 10+ state boards across Maths and Science. We at JITO Angel Network are proud to be part of Vidyakul and are very confident that the founders will lead the company to great heights.”
Further adding to the statement, Ghanshyam Ahuja, Managing Partner at ThinKuvate said, “We like Vidyakul because it is a fast-growing “BHARAT” focussed multi-lingual e-learning platform which is enabling teachers to create online courses for students to access quality education at affordable prices in Tier 2 /3 cities in India.”