From coding to live classes, 5 young Indian ed-tech startups you should know about

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Education technology has been the dominant theme of 2020 among Indian startups. The coronavirus outbreak put the already growing sector on steroids, making it mainstream overnight.

This year alone, Byjus’ valuation has gone from $5 billion to $10 billion, Unacademy from $500 million to $2 billion. And while valuation is only one metric, the change is evident as 2020 has also seen a lot of smaller edtechs gain traction. Moneycontrol looks at some of the early-stage ed-techs companies in India. 

Swiflearn

Founded by Abhinav Agarwal and Anand Bakode, Swiflearn provides live classes for students from Classes 1-10. It claims to be India’s “most sincere learning platform”, with face-to-face classes from the top 1 percent of teachers. It also provides unlimited tests for practice and a calendar for school and exam needs. Swiflearn is seed funded by VC firm Stellaris Venture Partners and Venture Highway.

Masai School

Masai derives its name from Masai Mara, the world renowned national park in Kenya, where co-founder Prateek Shukla got the idea for the company. Masai runs a coding bootcamp that lasts 30 weeks. The clincher is that Masai works with an income share agreement—students pay Masai’s fees only if they get a job—and most do.

With coding becoming an important skill in need of constant upgrade, its courses cater to students who have no coding experience as well. It is funded by India Quotient.

Leverage Edu

Founded by Akshay Chaturvedi, Leverage Edu helps students who want to study abroad—using technology to figure out their preferences, opportunities and connect demand to supply. Students who have used Leverage Edu have had over 1,000 offers from Ivy League universities, with Leverage having over 100 trained counselors and 2,000 mentors. It is funded by Blume Ventures and DSG Consumer Partners.

Classplus

One sign of maturity in a sector is when its starts throwing up enterprise software companies rather than pure consumer-focused firms. Classplus app allows coaching classes and individual teachers to set up an online teaching platform. Its software helps sell courses, conduct live classes, have a dashboard and unlimited students and recorded lectures. Classplus is also one of the more mature startups in the list and has raised over $12 million since 2018 from Blume Ventures, Falcon Edge Capital, Sequoia’s Surge and others.

Toddle

Toddle is a platform focusing on International Baccalaureate (IB) schools worldwide and helps teachers plan courses, create content, enable remote-learning, communicate with families of students and streamline evaluation of exams and test papers. Founded by Deepanshu Arora and Parita Parekh, it raised seed funding from Matrix Partners in January 2020. Toddle aims to simplify the entire teaching and learning cycle with a single solution.