Bengaluru-based educational toy maker PlayShifu today said it has raised $17 million (Rs 124.5 crore) as part of its Series B round led by existing investor Inventus Capital India.
Inflexor Ventures joined as an investor as part of this round, said PlayShifu in a statement. Other existing investors Chiratae Ventures and Bharat Innovation Fund also participated in this round, it added.
Vivek Goyal, co-founder and chief executive officer of PlayShifu, said that the company plans to expand its product range from 12 to 30 products to cover over 20 early-learning skills by 2022.
PlayShifu, operated by MobilizAR Technologies Pvt Ltd, was founded in 2016 by Dinesh Advani and Vivek Goyal.
It encourages early STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learning in children through educational toys and games.
The augmented reality-based firm says its focus is to bring innovation in its technologies, research phygital (a combination of physical and digital) interactions and do new product development.
The brand is currently available in 35 countries as compared with 15 countries in 2019 on the back of new global bricks-and-mortar and e-commerce partnerships.
Last year, PlayShifu said it had more than doubled its user base to 600,000 from 250,000 in 2019 and registered a 150% year-over-year growth in revenue for the third consecutive year.
Prior to this funding, PlayShifu raised $7 million in its Series A round led by Chiratae Ventures in 2019.
In 2017, it raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round led by Chiratae and IDFC-Parampara Fund.
The investment in PlayShifu shows continued investor interest in the edtech segment. Early-stage startups in the space have continued to raise capital, even as bigger players such as Byju’s and Unacademy snap up companies.
Edtech companies primarily catering to children have also attracted investor attention.
For instance, Kutuki, a learning platform focused on children between the ages of three and seven, raised Rs 16 crore (around $2.2 million) in a seed round led by Omidyar Network India in February 2020.
BeyondSkool, a live online upskilling academy for kids, raised $2 million in seed funding from early-stage investment fund Tomorrow Capital in January this year. Also in that month, Kyt Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates a platform focused on extracurricular learning for children, raised $5 million led by Alpha Wave Incubation.
