Education services platform CollegeDekho, owned by Girnarsoft Education Services Pvt. Ltd said it has raised $26.5 million (Rs 200 crore) in its Series B round of funding.
The round was led by Winter Capital Partners, private equity arm of ETS- ETS Strategic Capital along with Calega, existing investor Man Capital and Rajeev Chaba.
The investment marks the debut for Winter Capital Partners in India.
The company said it plans to use funds to improve its offerings for students and colleges, increase its investment in product and technology, expand internationally and grow new verticals like Ed-Fin-Tech and Student Accommodation.
“We believe that India’s edtech industry is poised to reach $10 billion in size in the next 5-10 years, compared to the current market size of about $2.5 billion,” Anton Farlenkov, Managing Director at Winter Capital Advisors, 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 HT Media. Other co-founders are Saurabh Jain, Rohit Saha and Rajiv Singh.
According to the company's website, CollegeDekho has over 800 partner colleges. While, over 35,000 colleges are listed in its database, it also guides students through the admission process and helps them pick career options based on their strengths.
CollegeDekho owns a portal that lets students compare colleges and score cut-offs for admission and more.
The website also provides information on the admission process, entrance exam, scholarships, and helps students pick careers based on their strengths.
The edtech sector has been attracting much investors attention as well as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities after the Covid-19 pandemic sparked a surge in demand for online learning platforms and solutions.
In August, Accel US and Softbank Vision Fund II led $650 million in Series E funding round in Executive education platform Eruditus.
In June, Quizizz, which gamifies quizzes and interactive lessons, raised $31.5 million last month in its Series B round of funding led by Tiger Global Management.
In the same month, VCCircle exclusively reported that Angel network FAAD Network led an angel funding round in Navars Edutech Pvt Ltd, an astronomy and space edtech company that caters to school students.