Ed-tech startup Schoolguru raises $3M from family offices

Schoolguru Eduserve Pvt. Ltd, a provider of e-learning services to universities, said on Wednesday it has secured Rs 20 crore ($3 million) in a Series A round of funding from family offices of affluent individual investors based in India and the US.

The company will use the capital to enhance its technology platform and expand its digital library, it said.

Mumbai-based Schoolguru was founded in 2012 by Shantanu Rooj, Ravi Rangan and Anil Bhat to help universities launch, run and manage ICT-enabled and online programmes on its managed platform. Rooj is an IIM-Calcutta graduate, while Rangan is from BITS Pilani and Bhat is from MS University. All three were working with Glodyne Technoserve prior to launching the startup.

"We have plans to offer services of our platform not only to ODL (open distance learning) students but also to students enrolling for traditional classroom education. With the technology support we would like to bring a change in classroom education in several remote areas of the country," said Rooj.

Schoolguru offers a technology platform to universities that has features such an integrated enterprise resource planning solution, a smart learning management system, a content library and a mobile learning platform.

Currently, 12 universities including the University of Burdwan, Uttarakhand Open University and Dr BR Ambedkar Open University are using these services. The company claims to cover about 170 graduate and postgraduate programmes and around 1.5 lakh students across nine major regional languages. Schoolguru is aiming to work with 25-30 Indian universities and targeting over a million students in the next couple of years.

In addition, it also plans to expand internationally and extend the services of its managed platform to other emerging markets.

In the ed-tech segment, India Educational Investment Fund last month invested in Report Bee Edusys Pvt Ltd, which has a cloud-based deep learning platform Report Bee, and Guru-G Learning Labs (India) Pvt Ltd, a gamified platform for teachers.

Kunal Kumthekar and Ravi Saxena, directors at Cipher-Plexus Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd, advised Schoolguru on the funding.