Edtech startup Sunstone Education Technology Pvt. Ltd, on Friday announced it has raised $35 million in its Series C funding round led by WestBridge Capital. Alteria Capital also participated in the round.
Sunstone is planning to utilize the fresh funds to expand its presence from the current 35+ cities to 100 cities across India. The company will also use the funds to expand into new programmes, with a focus on undergraduate tech programmes, it said in a release.
Founded by Ashish Munjal and Piyush Nangru in 2019, Sunstone offers a hybrid learning model for a slew of higher education courses such as Master of Business Administration, Bachelor of Technology, and Bachelors of Business Administration, etc.
Sunstone started with post-graduate management education courses, and eventually ventured into undergraduate programs in 2022. The company claims that it registered a 10 times growth in the past two years.
“The Indian higher education system is at the brink of an overdue transformation. Sunstone is well positioned to enable this change…we have made significant strides in the direction but still have a long way to go as the market opportunity and problem we’re trying to solve for, is very large,” said Ashish Munjal, co-founder and chief executive officer, Sunstone.
Sunstone last raised $28 million in Series B funding in October last year. At that time too, WestBridge Capital had led the funding, with participation from three existing investors: Saama Capital, Alteria Capital and Work10m.
“Seeing the ever-increasing demand and Sunstone’s potential to be a major disruptor, we are excited to double down our investment to support its mission of transforming the higher education sector in India,” said Sandeep Singhal, managing partner, WestBridge Capital.
Sunstone’s Series C funding round comes at a time when edtech platforms are facing troubles in raising fresh moolah as physical education and learning returned offline with ease in Covid-19 cases.
The dearth of funding in 2022 follows two golden years for edtech startups. In 2021, investors pumped $4.7 billion into edtech platforms while 2020 saw startups raising about $2.2 billion.
In comparison, funding for edtech startups declined by 50% in the April to June quarter of 2022, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report released last month.
