Bangalore based edtech startup Edvizo, has raised $150k from Inflection Point Ventures as part of its seed round. This marks the first ‘real’ institutional investment for the startup that aspires to re-invent India’s educational institutions via innovative technology. For Inflection Point, this makes its 8th investment in the last 60 days, a press release states.
Edvizo is a new name in the burgeoning Indian market of edtech platforms, and is like the Trivago of coaching classes. On Edvizo, students can “search, compare and enroll in the best institutes for competitive exam preparation.” On the business side of things, Edvizo helps coaching institutes save money on market and advertising and enables them to direct these funds on better teachers and facilities. So far, the startup has associated with 2650 institutes and has 50,000 registrations on its platform. The company says that the investment will be used to strengthen the technical & sales team, along with acquiring more users and expanding to more cities.
The company plans to expand its technical capabilities, which would help in improving its data quality and thus, bringing more credible institutes on board. The company follows a layered process to filter an institute and bring it on-board, and no institute enters the ranks without personal visits, checks & balances. This helps build trust among users and guarantees the genuinity of the platform.
Ravi Nishant, Founder & CEO, Edvizo says,“We are excited to work with IPV to continue building and rolling out our ed-tech platform at another level. Since the education sector is undergoing an enormous transformation due to the COVID-19 lockdown, most of the institutes are currently facing a lot of difficulties from conducting online classes to getting students for their new session. We are trying to tap into this opportunity.”
India has an extremely lucrative yet highly unorganised competitive exams coaching institutes market. The market has often been unofficially pegged at a staggering $40 Billion. While there are now chains of some high profile institutes across the country, it is actually those small, one-off coaching centres in Tier II/III cities that are churning in most numbers. For a student looking to choose a career path post Grade 10 in India, there is massive confusion in choosing the right institute. Edvizo is aiming to solve that problem.
IPV’s investment rationale seems to be that as well. Vinay Bansal, Co-founder CEO, IPV, says, “Most ed tech startups are going after the school, universities or directly to students kind of a market. But the coaching institute market is an untapped opportunity which Edvizo seems to be capitalising quite well.”
Inflection Point Ventures, which generally comes in early at seed/angle stages, has continued to invest in Indian startups even amid the uncertainty brought along by COVID-19. The venture’s bold nature has landed it some lucrative deals in some of the most glistening prospects. However, one can also argue that with share prices taking a massive hit, COVID might be a buyer’s market and Inflection Point is just playing the long game.
Nonetheless, the firm’s investments in sectors like health tech, ed tech, delivery, social distancing tech has been helping companies working in these areas scale up and eventually create a large scale impact for helping people in managing the COVID 19 crisis.
