Exclusive: Edtech firm Fundamentor raises seed funding

Pune-based Paratus Knowledge Ventures Pvt. Ltd, which runs edtech startup Fundamentor, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a seed round from entrepreneur and former venture capitalist Subramanya SV, as it aims to enhance marketing initiatives, a top company executive told Techcircle.in.

The company plans to use the funds to ramp up hiring. "We also plan to develop the product further and invest in marketing. We aim to get one million subscribers by 2020," said Ankur Vohra, co-founder, Fundamentor.

The firm is also in talks with Indian Angel Network (IAN) for additional funds, he said.

Subramanya is co-founder of investment management startup Fisdom. He was previously managing director of venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, and has served on the boards of Snapdeal, TaxiForSure and Matrimony.

Fundamentor is a mobile- and web-based platform that helps students between eight and 15 years of age develop cognitive, quantitative, verbal and creative thinking skills through gamified programmes. It claims to have 3,000 paid subscribers.

The startup was formed in September 2014 by Vohra, Bhargavi AR, Amol Patkar and Amit Vashisht. Vohra is an Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad graduate and has earlier worked with EY (formerly Ernst & Young), Ricardo, KPMG, and IBM. Bhargavi is an alumnus of University of Delhi's Faculty of Management Sciences and has previously worked with IHS Automotive. Patkar is an Indian Institute of Management Calcutta graduate and has previously worked with Aegon Religare Life Insurance (which was renamed as Aegon Life Insurance last year). Vashisht is a Delhi College of Engineering alumnus and has previously worked with several firms in the telecom and financial domains.

In October last year, Fundamentor had won Facebook's Innovation Challenge in the student category and had received $25,000 as prize money.

The edtech segment has elicited a lot of investor interest recently. In March, Unacademy, which is run by Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt. Ltd, had raised $500,000 (about Rs 3.3 crore) in funding led by Blume Ventures along with a clutch of angel investors.

In the same month, edtech firm 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 space to date.

Most recently, New Delhi-based Smartivity Labs Pvt. Ltd, an edtech startup that uses augmented reality and robotics for learning projects for kids, had raised $1 million (around Rs 6.7 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by its existing investor S Chand & Co. Pvt. Ltd and early-stage investment firm AdvantEdge Partners.

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