Excl: Education services startup Gray Matters raises funding from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

Atlanta-based Gray Matters Capital (GMC)-incubated education services firm Gray Matters India Pvt. Ltd (GMI) has received equity investment from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF), a philanthropic organisation of Dell founder, that invests in companies in the US, South Africa and India.

GMI focuses on assessments and educational analytics, with its rating tool providing learning level assessment by leveraging partnerships with organisations like Australian agency ACER.

The capital raised by MSDF will be used for developing products, building analytics framework, and will also be used to cater to the operational losses till the company hits break even, said Pradeep Sharma, chief executive officer of GMI.

According to him, the company was a non-profit organisation since its inception and decided to change its model to a for-profit company only a year ago. It aims to reach break-even by 2015-16.

The company aspires to reach more than 5,000 schools, 2 million students and 100,000 teachers in the next five years. At present it caters to 650 schools. GMI wants to increase the role of assessments and analytics in K12 education and help improve educational quality by making data actionable to schools.

"Assessments and school ratings are a big unmet need of schools that target low-income communities and this is a great opportunity for GMI to create industry suitable assessments and a market of quality conscious schools in this segment," said Prachi Windlass, Lead, Education, at MSDF.

The foundation recently invested in LabourNet Services India Pvt Ltd along with social VC fund Acumen.

For more details on the funding click here.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)