Edtech platform Pedagogy raises fresh capital from Inflection Point Ventures

Ahmedabad-based edtech startup Pedagogy has raised $400,000 in a bridge round, dubbed Pre-Series A round, led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV). The other participants in the round were not disclosed.

The startup intends to use the fresh capital to enhance its marketing, sales and support, product development and operations capabilities, according to an IPV spokesperson.

“Pedagogy wants to make education accessible and affordable to all students whereby they can get access to all types of content they need to prepare for their exams at a price they can afford. Bringing this idea to IPV helped us with its varied group of investors, which provides an ecosystem that a startup can lean on for help in scaling up faster,” Abhilash Sonwane, CEO of Pedagogy, said in a statement.

Sonwane set up the platform, which focuses on students preparing for engineering and medical entrance exams, in 2016 with Archin Shah and Ritesh Gandhi. Students can subscribe to its service to access a range of preparatory books along with a personalised study and a practice platform, the company said. The company said it saw 50,000 registered users on the platform in the past nine months.

“Pedagogy not only makes education more accessible but also provides enough ammunition to students that can help them succeed. The education system is evolving from averages to edges and Pedagogy's solution to consolidate the fragmented education market with personalised content is a driver for students’ success,” Abhinav Singhvi, an investor at IPV, said.

Founded in 2017, IPV is an investment initiative floated by a group of CFOs and finance professionals working for Indian startups. Nine such executives from startups including Myntra, BookMyShow and Grofers are part of the programme. 

The venture capital fund has invested about $3.5 million across eight projects since January this year. It said the investments were mostly focused on startups in the healthtech, online grocery delivery, media and entertainment, and edtech sectors, it said.

The edtech sector, particularly, is one of the few segments to see an uptick in investor interest during the Covid-19 lockdown.

This week, Noida headquartered edtech platform Qin1 raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round led by incubator Venture Catalysts. 

Last week, Tiger Global-backed Vedantu Innovations, in a further extension to its Series C round, saw a $6.8 million capital infusion from KB Global Platform Fund, an arm of South Korean banking group KB Financial Group. 

Knoctowl Technologies, which owns and operates online test preparation platform Pariksha, also raised an undisclosed amount in an ongoing seed funding round led by angel investor group INSEAD Angels.