BeyondSkool bags seed funding from Tomorrow Capital

BeyondSkool, a live online upskilling academy for kids, said on Tuesday that it has raised $2 million in seed funding from early-stage investment fund Tomorrow Capital.

Payal Gaba, founder and CEO of BeyondSkool, said in a statement that the startup will use the funds to strengthen its technological capabilities, ramp up its product offerings and expand its business operations in India and abroad.

BeyondSkool, which is operated by Ivy Minds Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd, was founded last year by Gaba and Atul Chugh. The startup, which targets students in the age group of 5-15 years, says it follows a learning approach of upskilling rather than tutoring to help children develop intelligence quotient (IQ), emotional quotient (EQ) and creative quotient (CQ) at the same time.

Prior to founding BeyondSkool, Gaba was director of marketing at Xanadu Realty. Before that, she had worked with Lodha Group, Spice Mobility, Samsung and Maruti. Chugh was formerly CEO at software firm Mobicule Technologies. He had previously worked with Reliance Jio, Vodafone and HDFC Bank, among others.

Rohini Prakash, CEO, Tomorrow Capital, said that the Indian education system has a large gap in early schooling, especially in developing strong foundations for children in scientific thinking, critical and creative thinking and communication skills.

“We believe BeyondSkool is a very relevant and unique solution that complements the core education to help provide the right platform for lifelong academic excellence,” she added.

Edtech startups have attracted a lot of investor attention over the past few years, and more so last year during the pandemic that forced schools, colleges and universities to shut down.

Last year, Unacademy raised a big funding round led by SoftBank, which catapulted the startup to the famed unicorn club with a valuation of at least $1 billion. With this, Unacademy became only the second edtech unicorn from India besides Byju’s.

Last year, Byju’s, Vedantu, Toppr and Eruditus also received big cheques from investors.

Funding in edtech startups has continued into the new year as well.

For instance, earlier this month, Kyt Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates a platform focused on extracurricular learning for children, raised $5 million led by Alpha Wave Incubation.