ENpower, which provides entrepreneurship learning programmes for school children, said it has raised Rs 2.65 crore ($377,500) in a seed round of funding led by Nikhil Vora, founder and CEO of Sixth Sense Ventures, a consumer-centric venture fund.
The fresh capital will help the company expand its outreach to 300 schools in the next 18-24 months and build out tech platforms to advocate innovation and entrepreneurship among school children, said ENpower in a statement.
Part of the capital will also be used to promote entrepreneurship search and mentoring platform -- India's Future Tycoons (IFT) -- for high-school students in the age group of 13 to 17, it added.
Besides the IFT platform, the startup offers courses and workshops like Junior MBA, Idea to Venture, Mind Your Own Business, ENlabs and Design Thinking.
ENpower, which is operated by Enlearning Skill Development Pvt. Ltd, was founded by Sushil Mungekar in 2016. Arvind Narayanan, who was executive director at DBS Bank India, joined as co-founder last year.
The online segment within education services continues to boom in India. Indeed, several ed-tech platforms have attracted PE and VC investors in recent months.
At the top of the heap is ed-tech unicorn Byju’s, which crossed $5 billion in valuation after raising $150 million led by Qatar Investment Authority in July.
Vora, who had worked for more than a decade at IDFC Securities before launching Sixth Sense Ventures, has made some investments in his personal capacity.
He was an early investor in Paytm parent One97 Communications Ltd. He made a whopping 75-fold gain on the investment by selling his stake to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2017.
He was also an investor in Kangaroo Kids Education Ltd. Vora exited the pre-school and K-12 chain of schools when it was acquired by EuroKids International Pvt. Ltd in 2017.
Sixth Sense Ventures, founded in 2014 by Vora, invests out of its second fund, which marked the final close at Rs 515 crore ($68 million) against the original target of Rs 350 crore ($54 million) within nine months.
Last month, Sixth Sense Ventures led a Series C funding round in Delhi-based online retailer Vahdam Teas Pvt. Ltd.
Its investments from the second fund include Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Fullife Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, which sells sports nutrition supplements under the brand Fast & Up, AVG Logistics, and Eupheus Learning.
