Mumbai-based Haygot Education Pvt Ltd, which runs ed-tech startup Toppr, has raised an external round of funding of Rs 2.16 crore (around $336,000) in a bridge round of funding, documents with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) show. The filing was done in September last year.
Toppr received the investment from Mauritius-based WGG International Ltd, who put in Rs 1.995 crore, and an individual named Nitin Gupta, who invested Rs 16.6 lakh in the ed-tech firm.
Text messages and email queries sent to Toppr’s co-founder Zishaan Hayath seeking comments did not elicit a response at the time of filing this report.
Toppr, which competes with the likes of Bangalore-based Byju’s, was founded in 2013 by Hayath, whose prior stints include Opera Solutions and ITC Ltd, and Hemanth Goteti, who was previously head of engineering at Futurebazaar.com and worked with Qlip Media, Synechron and Ubiquity Inc.
Before setting up Toppr, Hayath—who has backed firms such as Housing.com and Ola in his capacity as an angel investor—had also co-founded a phone commerce startup Chaupaati Bazaar which was acquired by Future Group in September 2010. He has also operated an angel investment group called Powai Lake Ventures.
Toppr is a test preparation platform for engineering, medical and secondary schools students. The firm covers exams such as IIT JEE and BITSAT in engineering; NEET, AIIMS, AIPMT, AFMC, MT-CET and EAMCET in medical; and NTSE, NSO, NSTSE and KVPY, among others at the secondary school level.
Users are charged fees that range from Rs 250 per month to Rs 6,900 for three years, depending on the course and duration selected. Toppr is also available on Android.
Last year, the company acquired EasyPrep, an online entrance exam preparation platform, for an undisclosed amount.
In April 2016, Toppr had raised $10 million (Rs 63.5 crore) in Series B funding from Fidelity Growth Partners India, SAIF Partners and Helion Venture Partners.
In October 2015, the startup had raised $2 million debt funding from InnoVen Capital. In May 2014, the firm had raised $2 million (Rs 12 crore) in seed funding from SAIF Partners and Helion Venture Partners. It had previously also raised angel funding.
In an interview with VCCircle last week, Hayath said that he is in talks with investors to raise another round of investment in this calendar year.
“We have been lean and we have been spending judiciously. Since we last raised funding, our revenue has grown 20 times and we still have a long runway to go with the same amount of money,†Hayath had said.
