Education today is moving ahead on a blended model, both online and offline modes, creating a hybrid culture that attempts to combine the best of both worlds. The demand for online education has skyrocketed, fueling the growth and expansion of edtech startups.
Classplus is one of the several startups in India that have capitalised on education’s accelerated shift to online, and has now bagged $70 million in its Series D round. This comes within months after it raised $65 million in Series C funding.
Abu Dhabi based Chimera Ventures has come in as a new investor while existing investor, RTP Global, has doubled down on their investment in the NCR headquartered company. The new round values Classplus close to 600Mn USD.
Founded by Bhaswat Agarwal and Mukul Rustagi, the four-year-old ClassPlus has positioned itself as a strong mobile-first SaaS platform that helps teachers and private coaching institutions manage and streamline their video distribution, payments, communication, and online assessments through a single platform.
The proceeds will be utilized for further expansion within India’s smaller cities and towns and to broaden its product offerings to further enrich a teacher and creator’s needs. India’s Tier II and Tier III cities are a hot market, with millions of students now eyeing for their teachers to go online for classes. Classplus is also eyeing global expansion, including Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia.
Additionally, it plans to invest in acquisitions and partnerships that will enable the company to “continue delivering a best-in-class experience to the educators and helping them create an impact in the education system by building bigger and stronger businesses,” Rustagi added.
This is useful especially when the distance becomes a barrier to learning, or as the pandemic showed us, confinement in our homes. Recent times have shown how we can use platforms such as Zoom and MS Teams to conduct and attend classes (and work), and teachers have access to a wide variety of tools to teach, record, and stream their teachings to earn money. Classplus helps them in this regard and has helped teachers reach more students than ever before.
The young startup has had a slice of the pie as online education came to prominence, and its platform soared as more and more creators, artists, lifestyle and fitness experts, and others sold their courses on Classplus.
Today, it has over 100,000 educators and creators from more than 3,000 towns and cities in India, most of whom hail from outside of urban Indian cities. Classplus said that the creators and educators can increase their profitability by two to three times within six months of adopting the company’s platform.
