Ed-tech startup Vedantu raises $5M in Series A round from Accel, Tiger Global

Bangalore-based education technology startup Vedantu Innovations Pvt Ltd, which provides live online tuition to school children and test prep courses, has raised $5 million (Rs 32 crore) in a Series A round from Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management.

Vedantu is the second venture for its founders, IITians Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena and Anand Prakash. Their previous venture Lakshya, a North India-focused test preparation firm, was acquired by MT Educare in 2012.

They launched Vedantu around six months ago.

Vedantu, which focuses on live online one-to-one tutoring, claims to have already got over 1,000 students and 100 teachers on its platform. It offers live personalised interaction through in-house-developed whiteboard, video and audio technology.

CEO Vamsi Krishna said this technology will work even in areas where internet connectivity is slow. He said Vedantu has users in 42 cities and has facilitated tuition for over 5,000 hours so far.

Besides monthly tuitions for students from grade 6 to 12, Vedantu facilitates IIT foundation and preparations for exams such as JEE.

Other players which offer online tutoring include Info Edge (India)-backed Meritnation, Mohali-based WizIQ and Bangalore-based TutorVista. TutorVista, which was acquired by Pearson, focuses on overseas students.

Krishna said Vedantu aims to differentiate through one-to-one tuition to ensure personalised interaction at fees comparable with that for group learning.

"We see a huge potential for personalised online live tutoring in India," said Anand Daniel, partner, Accel Partners.

Accel has so far invested in four education technology companies in India, including test preparation firm Ace Creative Learning, online certificate course provider Edupristine and kids learning and skill development-focused company Mind Edutainment.

"Vedantu's live online platform is uniquely positioned to become the leading provider of online tutoring services for more than 250 million K-12 students in India," Lee Fixel, partner, Tiger Global Management, said.

For Tiger Global, one of the most prolific investors in the Indian internet space, this comes as back-to-back bet on an ed-tech startup and the fourth ever education and ed-tech investment in India, as per VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle. Most recently it backed CultureAlley.com, an online language learning platform.

Vamsi Krishna graduated from IIT Mumbai while other founders Anand Prakash, Saurabh Saxena and Pulkit Jain graduated from IIT Roorkee. After brief stint in corporate jobs, they got together to start offering tuition classes in Ludhiana which led to the creation of Lakshya, their first venture.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)