Education services platform CollegeDekho, owned by Girnarsoft Education Services Pvt. Ltd, has raised $35 million (Rs 260 crore) in its Series B round of funding, the company said in a statement.
The round was led by Winter Capital Partners, the private equity (PE) arm of ETS- ETS Strategic Capital, along with Calega and Man Capital.
“Following the of Series B funding, we will be expanding our team and platforms to serve a larger number of students and colleges. We will also increase our investment in products and technologies, while fueling our growth in new verticals such as education loans, student accommodation and coaching for higher education. Even as we double our efforts to increase our reach in the Indian market, we will also consider expanding our presence abroad,” Ruchir Arora, Founder & CEO, CollegeDekho said.
CollegeDekho was co-founded in July 2015 by Ruchir Arora, an Indian School of Business alumnus who had earlier established HT Campus, the flagship education portal of HT Media. Other co-founders are Saurabh Jain, Rohit Saha and Rajiv Singh, the statement said.
According to the company's website, CollegeDekho has almost 1000 colleges and over 35,000 unique colleges listed in its database. It also guides students through the admission process, and helps them pick career options based on their strengths.
CollegeDekho connects prospective students with colleges, using its proprietary technology and artificial intelligence-based conversation bot. Its common application form platform enables students to apply to multiple colleges with a single click. For students who want to study abroad, CollegeDekho offers a full range of services from profile building, test preparation, to application assistance, university selection and visa assistance, the statement said.
The edtech market in India has witnessed frenetic funding and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year.
So far in 2021, three edtech companies -- Eruditus, upGrad and Vedantu -- have turned unicorns, or private companies with a valuation of at least $1 billion. This has taken the total number of edtech unicorns in India to five.
India’s edtech sector is expected to grow at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of over 15% from $2.8 billion in 2020 to $30 billion in 2030, citing a BLinC Investment Management report, which also terms India as the world’s most active edtech market.