Toprankers Raises INR 31 Cr From Sixth Sense Ventures

Aiming at expanding its hybrid coaching centres and build marketing reach and technology platform, EdTech venture Toprankers has raised USD 4 million (nearly INR 31.3 crore) in Series A funding from consumer fund Sixth Sense Ventures.

“Over 15 million students appear for Grade 12 every year, with roughly 10 per cent of them sitting for engineering and medical. The remaining 90 per cent are unclear about their career choices, we want to help this segment in making a clear choice about their career and offer them the right preparation courses for a brighter future,” Toprankers CEO Gaurav Goel said in a statement.

Toprankers claims to have helped over two lakh students till date in their career and aims to serve 10 lakh students in the coming three years. Toprankers taps into careers beyond engineering and medical, focusing on undergraduate and postgraduate programme streams in law, judiciary services, management, design, fashion and architecture.

In 2022, many edtech start-up raised funds in various series and few of them joined the club of unicorns in India. Lead, Bhanzu, PhysicsWallah, and Jovian are few start-ups among others who raised the fund this year include for various needs.

In Jan, India’s unicorn club had stepped in 2022 with a bang. Lead had joined the unicorn club following Mamaearth and Fractal post a USD 100 million funding and became the first edtech unicorn of the year. This Series E funding round was led by GSV Ventures and WestBridge Capital, doubling its valuation to USD 1.1 billion in just nine months.

Smita Deorah, co-founder, Lead was quoted saying that in K-12, everyone has been talking about edtech that is direct to the student by circumventing schools. Everyone focuses on test prep and tuition. I think that's where we are different. Most people have accepted that schools cannot be improved, but we think about it very differently. That's why we have focused on what we call school edtech.

In Feb, Edtech start-up Bhanzu had raised USD 2 million as a part of seed funding round—led by Lightspeed.

The round also saw participation from angel investors and founders of Indian start-ups, including Nitin Gupta, Uni chief executive; Kunal Shah, Cred founder; Ashish Gupta, former Helion Managing Director; and Gaurav Munjal, Unacademy founder, among others.

The funds used to scale Bhanzu's live classes in multiple geographies including the US, Canada, the UK, and the West Asia, and accelerate hiring across its tech and product teams.

During the month of May, Data science and machine learning focused edtech start-up Jovian had raised USD 1.5 million in seed funding. The funding round was led by Multiply Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Better Capital and prominent angels such as Kunal Shah, Founder, CRED, Phanindra Sama, Co-founder, redBus, Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder, Koo, Christian Oestlien, Director, Product Management, YouTube, Anand Madhavan, VP of Engineering, EverLaw, Aakrit Vaish, Co-founder and CEO, Haptik, and Ankit Bhati, Co-founder, Ola & Amnic.

The funds were purposed to be used to expand their team of data science experts to enhance their curriculum and provide mentorship to their growing student base.

Recently, Edtech platform PhysicsWallah—popularly known as PW has become India’s 101^st unicorn by raising USD100 million in Series A funding from WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures.

The company was valued at USD 1.1 billion after closing the transaction. So far, the company has been bootstrapped, which means Series A funding is the first instance of external investors coming on board. It is also the second bootstrap­ped company to raise a substantial amount in Series A after Kota-based Allen Career institute bagged USD 600 million from Bodhi Tree Systems.