Ed-tech startup CollegeDekho raises $1M from CarDekho parent

Jaipur-based Girnar Software Pvt Ltd, the company behind auto portal CarDekho and BikeDekho, has invested $1 million in ed-tech startup CollegeDekho.

The startup runs a portal that lets students compare colleges, select courses, determine cutoffs for their desired courses and access other career-related content.

It was started in July this year by Ruchir Arora, a graduate from the Indian School of Business who had earlier established HTCampus.

The company will use the funds raised in this seed investment round to develop its platform, ramp up the team and increase marketing activities.

Amit Jain, CEO and co-founder of Girnar Software, said that higher education in India requires a fresh approach and that the company liked CollegeDekho's idea of a disruptive development that could assist students in making more informed choices.

Arora said that India's higher-education market offers significant growth potential. CollegeDekho, he said, would provide an open platform that facilitates interaction between students and colleges.

Several ed-tech startups in India have raised funding this year. Last week, EduVision Retail Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs educational products aggregator Fastudent, raised an undisclosed amount of seed investment from a group of angel investors led by Evalueserve COO Ashish Gupta.

Evobi Automations Pvt Ltd, maker of Bibox tool kit for students, received Rs 3.5 crore ($530,000) in angel investment earlier this month. Education networking and peer-to-peer learning platform Almamapper, digital ed-tech startup Toppr.com, and online education and training provider for professional certification courses Simplilearn.com are among the other companies in this segment that have raised funding this year.

Girnar Software owns CarDekho.com, Gaadi.com, Zigwheels.com, BikeDekho.com and TyreDekho.com. It had acquired Zigwheels.com for an undisclosed sum in September. It was its third acquisition in the past year, besides price comparison site BuyingIQ and Gaadi.com. The six portals collectively clock 30 million unique visitors every month, Girnar claims.

In January, the company had raised $50 million (around Rs 307 crore then) from Chinese investment management firm Hillhouse Capital and Hong Kong-based hedge fund Tybourne Capital with participation from existing investor Sequoia Capital. The investment was done at a $300 million post-money valuation.