Pappaya Lite targets presence in one million schools in 5 years, eyes 400 million users

Pappaya was pioneered in 2016 by Dominic Emmeanuel and Sindhu Kathikeyan. Dominic is a Serial entrepreneur whereas Sindhu is an educationist working with several Educational institutions. With education as a background for the founders’ lineage, “Pappaya” was named as a tribute to Dominic’s father “P.J.Papiah’’.

Founder Dominic’s parents are P.J.Papiah (Late) and P. Michael Ammal Putti from a countryside called Pannur and Molasur in Tamil Nadu.  The founders’ families are from academic background as teachers and principals in various reputed schools. Dominic had his alma mater in St Patricks Anglo Indian School Adayar and his Engineering was from Hindustan College of Engineering. He began his working career at Microtech in Chennai as a sales specialist and moved to Bangalore. Then he advanced in his career working for reputed companies including Dell, Phoenix, IBM, Accenture and Infosys.  He moved to UK on a deputation working for multiple projects of Infosys and his last project was with BT. Sindhu completed her education in Bangalore. She had a successful initial career as a child artist and leading actor in around 25 blockbuster South Indian movies.

At one juncture, based on the suggestions and advice given by Mark O’ Flaherty, BT (British Telecom) friend and mentor of Dominic, the latter decided to take up the opportunity of becoming an entrepreneur. This marked his career as a successful entrepreneur after multiple opportunities in the IT services sector. A very close associate of Dominic, Manoj Ganapathy, Founder and CEO of SalesTrip, UK influenced him to embark his journey in creating a product. This idea from his friend, made Dominic more ambitious. So, he gathered a team with his immediate cousin Anto John, Bala Murugan, Prathap and Michael to start working on the product, by performing a careful analysis and research of the market. Then the team decided for a product creation in Edtech, as a result of which Pappaya ERP was created successfully in 2016.

Pappaya ERP laid its foundation as a paid version and has been growing steadily till date. Pappaya ERP is in more than 44K schools across the world with clients in India, Middle East, UK, Africa, and Japan. It slowly expanded into other business territories like Pappaya Cloud, Pappaya Sign, and Edumarket etc.

Based on a world’s leading educationist’s advice, Dominic launched Pappaya LITE in the late 2020.  It was built as a no cost version for government schools as well as for budget private schools. The primary motive of launching Pappaya LITE is to become the largest school ERP provider and provide more services globally. Pappaya LITE has been successful in this motive with contracts to implement for more than 50K schools, thus becoming the largest ERP service provider. This network is powerful making Pappaya LITE more likely to hit the target of achieving at least 1million schools in next 5 years with more than 400 million users.

Pappaya LITE is close to achieving a record-breaking valuation in its Series A funding round. With VCs and educators from around the world showing interest in Pappaya LITE, it will be showcased to the public soon and is also preparing to be listed on the stock exchange.

Are we about to witness the next unicorn in ed-tech? The dream might soon become a reality.