London-based Man Capital backs CollegeDekho

Edtech startup CollegeDekho.com, run by GirnarSoft Education Services Pvt Ltd, has raised $2 million (around Rs 13.2 crore) in its pre-Series A funding round from London-based Man Capital LLP.

Man Capital is the global investment arm of Mansour Group. This deal marks the Mansour Group's first investment in an Indian startup.

The new capital will be used for marketing, technology development, talent acquisition and onboarding more colleges on its platform, it said in a statement.

Last month, online tutorial firm Byju's raised $75 million (about Rs 500 crore) from Sequoia India and Belgian investment firm Sofina, making it the biggest ever investment in the ed-tech space.

Prior to that, financial services and analytics education startup Imarticus Learning raised $1 million (around Rs 6.7 crore) from a group of investors including VC fund Blinc Advisors.

In late February, Bangalore-based ed-tech firm Carveniche Technologies Pvt Ltd secured angel funding from Calcutta Angels, Lead Angels and a bunch of wealthy individuals.

CollegeDekho 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 last year by Ruchir Arora, a graduate from the Indian School of Business, who had earlier established HTCampus.

CollegeDekho had earlier secured $1 million funding from Girnar Software Pvt Ltd, the parent company of CarDekho.com.

Girnar Software, founded in 2007 by siblings Amit Jain and Anurag Jain, also owns BikeDekho.com, TyreDekho.com, and BuyingIQ. It had also bought Zigwheels.com from Times Internet Ltd in September 2015. The six portals collectively clock 30 million unique visitors every month, Girnar Software claims. In 2014, Girnar had acquired Naspers Group-owned Gaadi.com.

Last month, it secured an undisclosed amount of investment from Google Capital as part of its extended Series B funding round, with participation from existing investor Hillhouse Capital.

In January 2015, Girnar Software had received $50 million in the first tranche of the Series B funding round led by Hillhouse Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Tybourne Capital.