Tencent leads $15 mn Series A in e-learning platform Doubtnut

E-learning platform Doubtnut, owned by Gurugram-based Class 21A Technologies, has raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent Holdings.

The round also saw participation from returning investors Omidyar Network India, AET (Akatsuki Entertainment Technology) Fund, Cure.Fit founder and former Flipkart CBO Ankit Nagori, and Sequoia Capital India, the company said in a statement. 

The company raised a seed round last year from Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up programme Surge, Waterbridge Ventures, Omidyar Network India and AET Fund. 

The capital raised in the Series A round will be used to strengthen the firm’s distribution and technology, build on its content supply to match the evolving target base and to scale workforce. 

Founded in 2016 by Aditya Shankar and Tanushree Nagori, Doubtnut is a multi-lingual online learning platform that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning for image recognition, natural language processing and proprietary machine learning algorithms to provide video-based solutions to students’ queries. The platform currently caters to K12, IIT JEE and NEET students.

According to the company, the platform delivers video solutions to problems uploaded by students in different languages within 10 seconds. Those with a question need to take a picture of the problem document and submit it online. Doubtnut delivers a video solution along with other contextual videos to help the student understand the subject better, it said. 

The company claims over 13 million active users across platforms (web, app, YouTube and WhatsApp).

To date, Doubtnut claims to have resolved over 250 million questions in subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. It claims a 30-fold growth in its daily active users since it launched a WhatsApp query number in June last year.

“(The) Indian edtech sector has reached maturity to support frequent use-cases like doubt solving, homework help in a language of the student’s choice. That’s a smart way of building growth and monetisation. Tanushree and Aditya are founders who have discovered the pain point through their serial entrepreneurial ventures,” Manish Kheterpal, managing partner at WaterBridge Ventures, said.

Earlier this week, edtech platform WizKlub raised around $1 million in a seed round led by venture capital investor Incubate Fund India. Last week, AngelList led a seed round in edtech startup Konfinity. Earlier, Matrix Partners India invested in a startup called Toddle, which is a productivity platform for teachers.