In An Inter-Accelerator Partnership Pune-based EduGild Ties With US-based Impact Investor Gray Matters Capital

Pune based EDUGILD, India’s first edtech startup accelerator promoted by Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) and Avantika University as Knowledge Partners, today announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with US-based impact investor Gray Matters Capital.

Gray Matters Capital recently launched GMC Calibrator – a six month blended accelerator program focused on enhancing user engagement and improving product monetization of mobile apps and digital platforms of organizations in the ‘Learning to Earning’ space.

What’s the Partnership all about?

• Through this ‘inter-accelerator’ partnership, EDUGILD and Gray Matters Capital’s GMC Calibrator will look to create and nurture a pipeline of ‘investment-worthy’ enterprises in the edtech sector. These entities will have the potential for scale as well as higher impact in terms of promoting self-learning, improving learning outcomes, employability and bridging of gender gaps - both in education and the workforce.



• Besides collaborating to facilitate institutional partners for advisory, mentoring and scaleup, both EDUGILD and Gray Matters Capital aspire to jointly select and curate education and skilling enterprises for their respective accelerator programs.



• Cross promotional opportunities to showcase solutions of cohort members of both accelerator programs to each other’s network including but not limited to access to revenue enhancement opportunities



• The India based enterprises of the EDUGILD cohort will be considered for investment evaluation by Gray Matters Capital and its network of co-investors and funds.



• The cohort of GMC Calibrator will be able to access the canvas of education institutions under the MIT group and their other partner institutions comprising over 80,000 students in the KG to PG spectrum for product testing and piloting of technology led solutions.

Throwing light on the significance of this partnership, Rishi Kapal, CEO, EDUGILD said, “Our partnership with Gray Matters Capital is based on a common vision that we share of Edtech being a catalyst to change the education paradigm in India. This inter-accelerator partnership entailing joint application sourcing, access to mentors, product testing right up to unlocking funding opportunities will help in building a robust edtech sector in India."

Since its launch in June 2015, the global edtech accelerator has benefited 24 startups across 5 cohorts by providing access to sales and go-to-market opportunities, product lifecycle management support, organisation development inputs, UI/UX maturity, PR strategy, coworking spaces, Investor Relations and global scale-up opportunities. EDUGILD has partners in UK, Israel, China, Japan and ANZ for access to their companies.

“As impact investors, it is equally important for us to nurture the ecosystem. While we have many early stage enterprises in the edtech space in India, not many of them are able to attract investor interest,” said Ragini Chaudhary, India CEO, Gray Matters Capital. She added, “This partnership with EDUGILD is an attempt to scout for those edtech enterprises with break through solutions that can benefit the mass market, especially those women and girls in the lower-income groups. The product testing and piloting opportunities that the cohort of the GMC Calibrator can avail will be priceless”

In India, Gray Matters Capital has invested in for-profit education ventures with a focus on access to affordable quality education and on employability leading to a future job ready workforce with 21st century skills. It is the anchor investor in CBA Capital’s Education Catalyst Fund.

Based in Pune, EDUGILD is a global edtech startup accelerator which offers intensive mentorship and product realization program to EdTech start-ups around the world. Participants with creative, technology-based solutions to improve and enhance the learning experience in any field are welcome to apply.

In January 2017, EDUGILD expanded its global footprint when it partnered with JMDedu of China and Edtech Israel of Israel to enhance the number of Indian startups who would like to expand horizons in China, Israel and likewise.

Gray Matters Capital (GMC) is an Atlanta based impact investor with a mission to support "An education leading to a more purposeful life for 100 million women by 2036." In India, it invests in for-profit education ventures with a focus on access to affordable quality education and on employability leading to a future job ready workforce with 21st century skills. Investments in education focused funds; enterprises with break through solutions in education with its edLABS initiative; building markets through ecosystem development and providing value beyond capital through portfolio management constitute the key focus areas of its India strategy.

In An Inter-Accelerator Partnership Pune-based EduGild Ties With US-based Impact Investor Gray Matters Capital

Pune based EDUGILD, India’s first edtech startup accelerator promoted by Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) and Avantika University as Knowledge Partners, today announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with US-based impact investor Gray Matters Capital.

Gray Matters Capital recently launched GMC Calibrator – a six month blended accelerator program focused on enhancing user engagement and improving product monetization of mobile apps and digital platforms of organizations in the ‘Learning to Earning’ space.

What’s the Partnership all about?

• Through this ‘inter-accelerator’ partnership, EDUGILD and Gray Matters Capital’s GMC Calibrator will look to create and nurture a pipeline of ‘investment-worthy’ enterprises in the edtech sector. These entities will have the potential for scale as well as higher impact in terms of promoting self-learning, improving learning outcomes, employability and bridging of gender gaps - both in education and the workforce.



• Besides collaborating to facilitate institutional partners for advisory, mentoring and scaleup, both EDUGILD and Gray Matters Capital aspire to jointly select and curate education and skilling enterprises for their respective accelerator programs.



• Cross promotional opportunities to showcase solutions of cohort members of both accelerator programs to each other’s network including but not limited to access to revenue enhancement opportunities



• The India based enterprises of the EDUGILD cohort will be considered for investment evaluation by Gray Matters Capital and its network of co-investors and funds.



• The cohort of GMC Calibrator will be able to access the canvas of education institutions under the MIT group and their other partner institutions comprising over 80,000 students in the KG to PG spectrum for product testing and piloting of technology led solutions.

Throwing light on the significance of this partnership, Rishi Kapal, CEO, EDUGILD said, “Our partnership with Gray Matters Capital is based on a common vision that we share of Edtech being a catalyst to change the education paradigm in India. This inter-accelerator partnership entailing joint application sourcing, access to mentors, product testing right up to unlocking funding opportunities will help in building a robust edtech sector in India."

Since its launch in June 2015, the global edtech accelerator has benefited 24 startups across 5 cohorts by providing access to sales and go-to-market opportunities, product lifecycle management support, organisation development inputs, UI/UX maturity, PR strategy, coworking spaces, Investor Relations and global scale-up opportunities. EDUGILD has partners in UK, Israel, China, Japan and ANZ for access to their companies.

“As impact investors, it is equally important for us to nurture the ecosystem. While we have many early stage enterprises in the edtech space in India, not many of them are able to attract investor interest,” said Ragini Chaudhary, India CEO, Gray Matters Capital. She added, “This partnership with EDUGILD is an attempt to scout for those edtech enterprises with break through solutions that can benefit the mass market, especially those women and girls in the lower-income groups. The product testing and piloting opportunities that the cohort of the GMC Calibrator can avail will be priceless”

In India, Gray Matters Capital has invested in for-profit education ventures with a focus on access to affordable quality education and on employability leading to a future job ready workforce with 21st century skills. It is the anchor investor in CBA Capital’s Education Catalyst Fund.

Based in Pune, EDUGILD is a global edtech startup accelerator which offers intensive mentorship and product realization program to EdTech start-ups around the world. Participants with creative, technology-based solutions to improve and enhance the learning experience in any field are welcome to apply.

In January 2017, EDUGILD expanded its global footprint when it partnered with JMDedu of China and Edtech Israel of Israel to enhance the number of Indian startups who would like to expand horizons in China, Israel and likewise.

Gray Matters Capital (GMC) is an Atlanta based impact investor with a mission to support "An education leading to a more purposeful life for 100 million women by 2036." In India, it invests in for-profit education ventures with a focus on access to affordable quality education and on employability leading to a future job ready workforce with 21st century skills. Investments in education focused funds; enterprises with break through solutions in education with its edLABS initiative; building markets through ecosystem development and providing value beyond capital through portfolio management constitute the key focus areas of its India strategy.

Edugild Launches Fourth Batch Of Edtech Business Accelerator Programme; On-boards Five Edtech Startups

After completion of three successful batches with 16 companies, Edugild, an initiative of Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), Pune paves way for the 4th batch of its accelerator programme. The global edtech startup accelerator will create a customized ecosystem to scale up five edtech startups from September 2017. The selected startups will be a part of an intensive 4-6 months of Edugild’s business acceleration program designed by global experts and have an extended 12-18 months of relationship.

Speaking on the development, Rishi Kapal, Global Strategist and CEO of Edugild said, “We are proud to host the fourth batch of our edtech accelerator program. The uniqueness of this batch is the diversity of the startups – ranging from robotics, artificial intelligence, overseas education consultants, virtual labs, creative learning into Film, TV, performing arts, design. EDUGILD aims to support impressive talent that employs the latest technologies to address education-related challenges and expand existing markets or create new markets globally.”

Edugild will offer an access to co-working space, product life cycle management support, organization development inputs, business landscape, investor relations, UI/UX maturity, PR strategy and global scale-up opportunities to the five edtech startups.

All these edtech startups are aligned to Edugild’s thought (Vision) of “Revenue first and Funding Later”. The fourth batch will go through a diagnostic boot camp on 8th and 9th September in Pune. Subject matter experts in relevant domains will work 1:1 with the companies to figure out their needs and action plans.

With the launch of the 4th batch, Edugild now has a bouquet of 21 edtech startups of which 6 are from overseas and the rest from India. Edugild’s program spans across multi-disciplinary engagements, customized for each startup. From the cohorts edtech startups Simulanis, Gradopedia, Classboat, Ahhaa, YoScholar, ProctorEdu have already raised funds and overall the entire portfolio of companies are scaling up well. Edugild has also expanded its partnership horizons to cross borders with EPG UK, Edtech Israel, JMD EDU China and strategic alliances in USA and Australia.

The startups for the fourth batch were selected from an application long tail of 250+ companies. The startups of the fourth batch are - Edvantics from Hyderabad, KnowHassles from Mumbai, Musein from Bengaluru, Vidya Robotics from Pune, Aurangabad and TrisLabs from Bengaluru.

Meet The Five Edtech Startups  

Edvantics

Founded by ISB Alumni and ex Microsoft employees, Edvantics is creating an ecosystem of products and services, to help educational institutes and students across K-12 and Higher Education to realize their maximum potential and succeed. HEDNext is the initial flagship offering from Edvantics geared for institutes to manage quality and improve faculty productivity. The Hyderabad-based platform brings together institutes, students, campus recruiters and skill providers to benefit from AI based recommendations in selecting right jobs, candidates, courses, and careers.

KnowHassles

Founded by a problem solver and serial entrepreneur KnowHassles EdApt intends to provide accurate solutions to international students’ everlasting problems related to the settlement in a foreign land in the form of concise mobile app. The Mumbai-based mobile app displays perfect combination of vital information about necessary on arrival processes, social networking based value added services, student specific product marketing and e-commerce shopping experience.

Musein

Founded by an IIM Kozhikode and IIT Madras alum, ex KPMG professional, Musein is a learning and mentorship community for people interested in creative areas like Film, TV, performing arts, design etc with access to online courses: rich quality courses developed by experts in respective creative fields ranging from basic to advanced level. Mentorship: mentors with prior experience to provide necessary support and guidance through consultation sessions, and full-fledged mentorship programs.

Vidya Robotics

Vidya Robotics is a consumer electronics company which is developing a host of educational robots for children’s edutainment. Their products aim at enhancing STEM skills in young minds above 8 years and making learning a fun activity for them. Using principles of Robotics, AI & IOT, our Robots and kits help children receive an early exposure to technology, coding and electronic hardware.

TrisLabs

The founders being BITS Pilani alumni and ex Avaya, TrisLabs is the first collaborative online learning platform that unifies practical and theoretical learning by providing “on the go” virtual labs, helping students, teachers, universities and Industry. Their story is about making higher education a fascinating process – Transformation from burning a costly Electronic hardware to simulating over the internet, from environment dependent system to platform agnostic simulating environment.

 

Edtech Accelerator EDUGILD Onboards 6 Startups For Its Third Batch

EDUGILD has opened gates for the 3rd batch of its accelerator programme and will now mentor six edtech startups (3 from India & 3 from USA) from March 2017. The uniqueness of this batch is the diversity of the startups – ranging from Augmented Reality, Gamification, K-12 Store Front Management, Skill Assessment, Student Motivation Management, Pre-school Holistic program on tech solutions, to name a few.

In the last 18 months, EDUGILD has successfully scaled up 10 Edtech companies, 7 from India, 2 from USA and 1 Russia. EDUGILD’s program spans across multi-disciplinary engagements, customized for each startup. From the cohorts edtech startups Simulanis, Gradopedia and Classboat have already raised funds and Ahhaa.com has received angel funding commitment. Over the last 6 months, EDUGILD also expanded its partnership horizons to cross borders with EPG UK, Edtech Israel, JMD EDU China and strategic alliances in USA and Australia. Overall EDUGILD’s promise of tangibility and global scale up opportunities are coming true for the startups.

Rishi Kapal, Global Strategist and CEO of EDUGILD has a firm belief that “Speed of creating and executing the strategies is a key differentiator for our companies to scale up fast. We are here to create the right conditions for bringing out the best out of our startups. The founders have way more potential than they know and we are here to make them exploit the capabilities to their full potential”.

The third batch of startups were selected from an application long tail of 300+ companies. Of the third batch, there is one company each from Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, the other three being from USA (New York, Boston and San Francisco). All the companies are aligned to EDUGILD’s thought (Vision) of “Revenue first and Funding Later”. The third batch will go through a diagnostic boot camp on 3rd and 4th March 2017 in Pune. Subject matter experts in relevant domains will work 1:1 with the companies to figure out their needs and action plans.

Here is a brief about each startup:

Skillzot (Mumbai/Pune, India)
Founded by Sandeep and Rommel, Skillzot strives to enable proven behavioral science ideas, through technology (and some magic), to help teachers, teaching institutes, trainers and instructors, teaching any skill or subject, to engage better with their learners. Thereby helping more and more learners stay motivated right through the requisite learning period and become ‘zots’ (masters) at whatever they are learning.

Skillsoniq (New York, USA)
Founded by Abhinav Verma with Hemant’s technical advisory, they bring alive the power of Adaptive Testing. Their platform measures key skill areas centered on analytical, graphical, general awareness and agility. Tests being adaptive means that as you crack a question, the platform throws harder questions at you, and as you get questions wrong, you are downgraded to a lower difficulty level. The questions are never repeated, and that the skill score matches users' true skill set.

Yoscholar (Bangalore, India)
Founded by Gaurav Mehta and Amit Mishra, Yoscholar is an innovative platform that offers entire gamut of products and services be a school’s store front. Aiming to be a trusted partner for parents when it comes to making right choice for education and development of a child.

ChangeMyPath (San Francisco, USA)
Founded by David Mandel and Zack Karlsson, Change My Path provides a co-operative gaming framework to deliver interactive education and job skills training content. It has built a system of configurable game modules for job skills training. ChangeMyPath allows organizations to break their training content into components, and then quickly and easily plug those course components into customizable game modules.

Kids Triangle (Boston, USA)
Founded by Amit Kumar Yadav. Kids Triangle offers scientific child development through technology, which focus on 360 holistic development of child including healthcare, family care and education. Company enables personalized learning along with child healthcare including nutrition diet, hygiene which significantly boost child development

Study Marvel (New Delhi, India)
Founded by Yash Bodane and Soma Sharma. Study Marvel is an augmented reality platform for K-12 Segment which lets users to explore, visualize and save digital models, Image, Video, Hyperlinks in the physical space and superimpose storyboards and lessons practically anywhere on any object.

Edugild Backed Gradopedia Raises Seed Funding from Dubai Based HNIs

Mumbai-based Career Intelligence startup Gradopedia has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Dubai-based high net worth individuals. Launched in early 2015, Gradopedia started as a Career Discovery platform – helping graduates understand different career profiles by watching videos from professionals.

Gradopedia was a part of the first batch of Edugild, a startup accelerator programme focussed on the education sector. Other startups in this segment include iDreamCareer (iDC), Careers360, Avagmah, iProf, Meritnation, Simplilearn, etc.

The 4 month acceleration programme helped Gradopedia address the ‘personalisation’ problem where graduates really need help with understand profiles and get an idea of where they stand - and how to build their respective careers instead of following the herd.

"We are working with actual professionals across career profiles to define employability through a ‘GradoScore’ for each profile – a combination of technical skills, personality traits and other parameters. This score allows graduates to benchmark themselves and see the jobs that are available at their current level, while also highlight the tangible steps they can take (courses, workshops, mentorship, etc.) to improve their score and land a better job," said Hitesh Awtaney, Co-founder and CEO, Gradopedia.

It also opens up an affiliate revenue model apart from charging companies for recruitment, while the product stays free of charge for graduates.

Gradopedia will use the new funds to enhance and build on the product, do some key hires in Technology and Operations and get early traction.

“We’ve tested the waters with pilots in various segments and are delighted by the response. The aim is to fill the Core Team and attain operational breakeven by the end of the financial year,” said Hitesh.

When asked about the next round, Hitesh added – “We’ve already received investor interest from various players in the education and recruitment space. We’re going to open the Angel round in January and go with the investors who can take the venture to the next level.”