Ed-tech startup iDreamCareer gets funding from BCCL's Brand Capital

iDreamCareer.com, a career planning services portal, has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-series A funding from media house Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd's ad-for-equity investment arm Brand Capital.

iDreamCareer, run by Delhi-based education-technology company Medhavi Professionals Services Pvt. Ltd, will use the funds for brand building and marketing.

"The peak education season is starting and our product line and application system are well in place. We will be going full throttle with aggressive branding and marketing of our brand to fully tap into this season," said Ayush Bansal, co-founder of iDreamCareer.

The startup provides career planning services, college admission information and counselling to students. It currently operates in Delhi-NCR, Bangalore and Ranchi. Bansal claims the portal gets about four to five lakh unique visitors every month and earns monthly revenue of Rs 10 lakh.

The portal was founded in late 2013 by Bansal and Pravesh Dudani. Bansal is an MBA in finance from ICFAI Business School and was an investment banker earlier. IIT-Kharagpur alumnus Dudani earlier co-founded GreenHat Ventures and worked at Educomp Solutions and IndiaCan Education. He has now moved to a non-executive role at iDreamCareer.

iDreamCareer had raised angel funding in August 2015 from ah! Ventures and other investors including Mohit Satyanand, Vivek Joshi and Indian Design Group. The startup switched to a B2C model after raising angel funding.

Harshad Lahoti, founder of ah! Ventures, said the startup takes a more holistic approach for career planning services where it mixes its online model with its offline offices and telephonic interviews.

iDreamCareer said it is looking to raise $5 million in its Series A round by the end of this year to expand its presence in 15 cities in India and the Middle East and to develop assessment and mentoring tools.

A number of ed-tech startups have raised funding in recent months. In March, tutorial company Byju's raised $75 million (about Rs 500 crore) from Sequoia India and Belgian investment firm Sofina, in what is perhaps the largest deal in this segment till date. The same month, financial services and analytics education startup Imarticus Learning raised $1 million.

Earlier this month, online test preparation platform Oliveboard raised an undisclosed amount in funding from India Educational Investment Fund, an early-stage impact investment fund established by Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. In February, Bangalore-based ed-tech firm Carveniche Technologies Pvt Ltd secured angel funding.