With the pandemic still at large, schools and colleges continue to remain closed to stem the flow of the virus. Education has taken a backseat with physical classes being out of the question, forcing students and teachers alike to go online for education. This has directly resulted in a business boom for edtech start-ups, as they have utilized the trend to profit immensely. T
his time, it is the turn of the three-year-old edtech platform for tutors, Classplus, which raised $65 million as part of its Series C funding round led by Tiger Global.
This is the fourth round of funding raised by the start-up in the last 15 months – it has raised over $85 million in funding to date from investors like Sequoia Capital’s accelerator program Surge, Times Internet, and former Indian captain and cricket icon Sourav Ganguly. The current funding round saw participation from GSV Ventures and its existing investors Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), Blume Ventures, and RTP Global as well. The round has valued Classplus at $250Mn.
Proceeds from the funding round would be used to expand geographically, grow its engineering team and hire aggressively for new talent across engineering, business, and product roles, and build on its product capabilities.
Founded by Mukul Rustagi and Bhaswat Agarwal, Classplus offers coaching institutes, private tutors, and tuition centers a way to move online to take classes, helping them to streamline their communication, take live classes, automate daily tasks, and manage student communities online. Claiming to serve a user base of 20 million students and 100,000 tutors across 1,500 cities in India, it also allows educators to sell their online courses, helping them invest more time in creating high-quality content and building an enduring business for themselves.
Classplus claims that a typical educator is able to grow its student base from 100 to 1200 students within 8-10 months of using its platform. It also claims to help tutors increase their profitability by 2-3 times within 6 months of using the platform. About 80% of the educators on Classplus’ platform come from Tier-2 cities and beyond in India.
“We are on a mission to ensure that every educator can go online and connect with their students across the world. The power of educators has historically been confined to their local neighborhoods. With Classplus, educators have been able to build and expand their online presence and monetize their content without any major investment and effort,” said Mukul Rustagi, CEO and co-founder, Classplus.
“When lockdowns struck India, Classplus emerged as the critical infrastructure software for the $30 billion offline tutoring industry. With the platform growing nearly 10x in the last 12 months, GSV views it as a ‘Weapon of Mass Instruction.’ Co-founders Mukul and Bhaswat are empowering tutors in India to go online, enabling them to build bigger and stronger businesses while also expanding access to localized education,” said Deborah Quazzo, managing partner, GSV Ventures.
With schools and colleges not looking to open anytime soon, this seems to be the age of edtech start-ups.
