Kreedo Early Childhood Solutions Raises $2.3 Mn in Pre Series A Funding

[L-R] Mridula Shridhar and VK Manikandan_Kreedo Founders

The new capital will be used towards Kreedo’s goal of partnering with 7000+ schools and positively impacting the lives of 1 Million+ children annually in India

Kreedo Early Childhood Solutions, a Bengaluru based company that provides end-to-end solutions to transform the way early learning is delivered, has raised $2.3 Million in Pre Series A Funding. The round was led by Switzerland based UBS Optimus Foundation, Spectrum Impact, Gray Matters Capital and 1Crowd, with participation from Innospark Ventures, IIM-CAN and The Chennai Angels. The latest round of funding will be used towards accelerating Kreedo’s next phase of growth and expansion.

Founded in 2012 by husband-wife duo Mridula Shridhar and VK Manikandan, both alumni of IIM-C, Kreedo is on a mission to change the way early learning is delivered in budget private schools and preschools. India has an estimated 3,50,000+ budget private schools, which charge less than Rs 30,000/- per year and mostly cater to students from low-income families. Learning outcomes are quite low in most of these schools with the majority of them still following rote methods and having limited resources to support or train their teachers.

Kreedo Lab

Kreedo is transforming the learning experiences of children in these schools via a structured and immersive learning process through its 6T Learning Framework that has Play Based Learning at its core and includes Toys, Technology, Theory (books), Teacher Training, Timetable, and Teamwork (peer learning). By setting up activity labs and consistently training teachers, Kreedo offers a comprehensive solution that empowers schools to significantly improve learning outcomes.

Kreedo Team

Commenting on the investment, Mridula Shridhar, CEO, Kreedo, said, “Our vision is to democratize quality early education. We have an overwhelming response from our partner schools who are looking for the most affordable and simplest way to improve foundational learning. The new round of funding will enable us to take Kreedo to 7000+ schools across multiple cities in India”

Dhun Davar, Head of Social Finance, UBS Optimus Foundation, said “We see Kreedo’s business model as a unique way to create social change by making quality early education accessible to every child from lower income communities.”

Girichandra, Partner at 1Crowd added “In Manikandan and Mridula, we found a team that is passionate about their cause and extremely clear on how to mitigate learning poverty in budget schools”.

Pranay Adhvaryu, Head of Investments, Gray Matters Capital adds, “The pandemic has adversely impacted the already distressed early education sector, and now Kreedo is seeing tremendous traction as they address a massive learning gap which schools need help to fill.”

Mirik Gogri of Spectrum Impact said, “We are excited to be a part of their growth story and support their vision of impacting 1 Million+ children annually in India, especially from lower income families, by 2025.”

Over the years, Kreedo has demonstrated impressive growth and impact, transforming the way schools understand and deliver early learning and emerging as a key player in the low-cost early education category. With the massive demand for in school learning post the pandemic, and a significant focus on foundational literacy and numeracy in NEP, Kreedo is well placed to accelerate rapidly.

Kreedo partners with budget private schools and preschools and transforms the way learning is delivered in early years. Kreedo has so far impacted 2,00,000+ children by implementing its curriculum in 400+ budget private schools and 1500+ preschools and has measured learning outcomes that are 50% better than market in budget private schools based on an independent study done by FSG.

Website: https://kreedology.com/

To Equip Students, Teachers with Internet-enabled Devices, 74% Pvt Schools & Educational Institutes Show Willingness to Avail Loans

 Indian School Finance Company, a Non-Banking Financial Company with the distinction of being the first company in the world to exclusively fund education institutions to meet their infrastructure requirements and the first niche financier to budget private schools (BPS) in India, has today released insights of its ‘e-School Readiness Survey’ conducted with US-based education sector focused impact investor Gray Matters Capital.

The pan-India survey conducted in May 2020 with a total of 1678 respondents comprising owners and principals of private schools, colleges, and vocational training institutes, was conducted to assess the challenges faced by such non-government backed educational institutions in the ongoing COVID-19 induced closures, and their readiness to transition their operations from an offline to an online business model.

61% respondents of this survey charged a monthly fee of under Rs. 1,500 (US$ 20) per month.

Survey Insights

FINANCIAL HEALTH OF SCHOOLS

Fees Collection, a Challenge

• Overall, 85% respondents affirmed that they were reeling under financial stress on account of their inability to collect fees. In Budget Private School (BPS) segment, 87.5% of the respondents reported challenges faced on this front.


• The reasons cited by schools are ‘Parents not having the income to pay fees due to the lockdown’ (55%); ‘Parent’s not being able to come to school or bank premises to pay fees owing to the lockdown’ (24.5%); ‘Parents receiving salaries late and cannot pay on time’ (12%) and ‘Parents not keen to pay for online classes’ (8.5%).

Cash is still King for Fees Payments

• Over 67% of the respondents offered fees payment in non-digital modes such as Cash (60.27%) and cash and cheques (6.9%). 


• NEFT/ RTGS, Payment Wallets and Cards have been adopted as a payment option by under 33% of schools surveyed. 


• Overall, cash is still an option for payment across 99% survey respondents


• 54% respondents indicated not being keen on online payment solutions owing to parents of school students not being in a position to effectuate such payments.

DIGITAL READINESS OF SCHOOLS

Willingness to take schools online

• More than 72% of the respondents have indicated their willingness to explore digital solutions for school continuity


• Over 37% respondents have already started some sort of remote schooling by sharing educational content via messaging solutions such as WhatsApp.


• Higher the level of education offered, higher the willingness to explore digital solutions for remote schooling.  


• 47% of Primary schools, 51% of Secondary and Higher Secondary Schools and over 60% of Private Colleges and Vocational Training Centres have indicated willingness to try 

The Challenge of Digital Access

• Less than 31% of the survey respondents indicated all students having access to internet via internet enabled devices such as laptop, tablet or mobile phones.


• Amongst the surveyed Budget Private Schools (BPS) charging under Rs. 1500 monthly fees, less than 25% indicated that their students could access online education via internet enabled devices.


• 58.4% of survey respondents reported that teachers were equipped with internet connectivity and internet enabled devices at home to conduct online classes. This number stood at 54.39% for teachers of Budget Private Schools charging under Rs. 1500 monthly fees.

Speaking about the survey insights, Raunak Singhvi, Executive Director - Indian School Finance Company said, “A black swan event like COVID-19 has had cataclysmic repercussions on finances as well as operations of the schools we serve. While schools can resort to loans, it is imperative that they revisit their operational model and adopt technology for remote schooling in order to sustain themselves. 74% of educational institutes have shown their willingness to avail loans for equipping teachers and students with internet enabled devices so as to access online learning resources. What is also heartening to see from our survey is that parents are willing to pay fees to the school for online classes if they see value in what their children are being taught.”

Indian School Finance Company (ISFC) provides financial assistance to the school ecosystem in the form of infrastructure improvement loans, working capital loans, vendor and teacher capacity building loans besides school fees payment loans to parents. To address the current COVID-19 related challenges faced by budget private schools and educational institutes, ISFC would be introducing special loan products and technology powered solutions to help schools in their endeavour to sustain themselves and ensure education continuity for their students.

Indian School Finance Company (ISFC) is a Non-Banking Financial Company engaged in the business of lending to educational institutions and entrepreneurs managing such institutions. It is the first company in the world to exclusively fund education institutions. The company is widely recognized and appreciated in the education segment for its impact on schools and focus on improvement in quality of education. The objective of ISFC is to assist the Schools and other education institutions in capacity building through infrastructure improvements, thereby enabling students to access quality education.

Incubated in 2009 by Gray Matters Capital, ISFC is the first company in the world to exclusively fund education institutions to meet their infrastructure requirements and the first niche financier to affordable private schools (APS) in India.

Since its inception, ISFC has disbursed over 11500 loans in excess of US$ 140 million to nearly 6800 school customers and over 4500 teachers, thereby benefiting over 5 million students of which 2.2 million have been girls. 

As on 31st March 2020, ISFC had an AUM of US$ 51.86 million with Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka being its top markets.

To know more, visit: www.isfc.in 

About Gray Matters Capital

Gray Matters Capital (GMC) is an Atlanta based impact investor with a gender lens that is on a mission to “Find a more purposeful life for 100 million women by 2036." Aligning with its mission is its strategy of making sector agnostic investments globally in for-profit enterprises whose products and services benefit women and girls at scale. 

GMC sees education, primarily catering to under-resourced and low and middle income sections of the society, as a powerful tool to bring about gender equality and social equity. Over the past 12 years, it has focused on supporting the education ecosystem India by funding for-profit enterprises in the ‘learning to earning’ space, besides being pioneers in establishing the school finance industry catering to low cost private schools in India with Indian School Finance Company (ISFC); Pakistan with the set-up of Taleem Finance Company Ltd (TFCL), in addition to Nigeria (with EdFin Microfinance Bank).

GMC has till date funded over 80 enterprises across the world  to the tune of US$ 125 million.

Career Counselling Startup iDreamCareer Raises Funding from Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS

Delhi-based iDreamCareer (iDC), one of India's largest unbiased career counselling start-up ventures, has today announced that it has raised a Pre-Series A funding round of an undisclosed amount from US-based education and skilling sector focused impact investor Gray Matters Capital.

“The funding made by our edLABS initiative is aimed at improving learning outcomes of educational courses by mapping student abilities with courses suitable for them; which in-turn would help in boosting their future employability prospects”, said Srinita Mitra, Portfolio Manager, Gray Matters Capital edLABS outlining the investment rationale.

"The quality of partnerships cobbled and the passion shown by the team at iDC to make a difference to India’s education and employability paradigm through career counselling also made it a compelling investment for us," said Mitra.

iDC works with 12 state government (Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka & more), various International Agencies (UNDP, UNICEF, Central Square Foundation & more), private schools (Navy Schools, Sunbeam Group, Maharaja Sawai Man Singh, Apeejay group, Indian School Muscat, Kunskapsskolan, Orchid International group & more) & non-profit/CSR organizations (Magic Bus, Miracle Foundation, McKinsey’s Generation, Hero Group & more) in helping them establish effective career guidance solution for students.

iDC’s Career Counselling Spectrum



Ever since its inception in 2013, iDC has been helping more than 2.5 million students annually from Std. VIII to XII in schools and also in U.G. colleges in India every year in choosing the right career that maximizes their potential.

iDC’s flagship Psychometric Assessment tool helps students mapping their abilities, personality traits as well as areas of interest to discover their inner potential while its Career Planner tool helps in aligning this potential with suitable career options. It has developed proprietary career guidance content on 460+ careers, 25,500 specialization tracks, 17,000+ colleges, 1049 entrance exams and 960+ scholarships. It is India’s first multilingual career guidance platform which is now available in 5 regional languages.

iDC career counselling programs are being delivered in 6700+ schools across India & the Middle East.

Its most recent project with the Delhi Government which involved building capacity of the career counsellors, administering its psychometric career assessment and creating a state customised career guidance portal impacted 3.74 lakh students in the state.

On the other end of the spectrum, iDC has empowered over 684 professionals to become highly skilled career counsellors in 84 Indian districts and 6 countries through the iDreamCareer certification program where training is imparted via physical training programs, online webinars, forums and a counselling management system.

Usage of Funds

[caption id="attachment_132790" align="alignright" width="300"] Ayush Bansal, iDC CEO[/caption]

Speaking about the fund raise, Ayush Bansal, Founder and CEO, iDreamCareer said, "Our vision at iDreamCareer is to provide unbiased career guidance to students irrespective of their socio-economic background and we have successfully validated our business model in the past few years. We are extremely happy to be backed by Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS at a time when iDreamCareer is moving into the phase of high growth. The funding round will help us to further establish high-end technology products in the space of career guidance for millions of students. This round will help us in setting up the growth phase for the company"

The funds raised in the current round will be utilized by iDC to strengthen its online platform’s technology and to build automated data-driven career planning tools based on its huge data and content on careers; besides expanding into more private schools in India and the Middle East.

Into the Future

The company's operational revenue grew by 3.3x in FY'19 and it is estimated to grow further by 3.5x in FY'20E. It has achieved an EBITDA margin of 15% in FY'19. This year, iDCs expects 5+ million students to use its platform.

“Our next long term plan is to launch an array of ecosystem products which can add on to our existing products of career guidance. We will be looking to drive a subscription-based B2C product on our mobile app which is due to launch in September 2019” signs off Bansal.

iDC had earlier raised funds from former PepsiCo director G.K. Sinha in 2013, ah! Ventures in 2015 with investors Mohit Satyanand, Neeraj Gambhir, Vivek Joshi Indian Design Group & others and Times Group’s Brand Capital in 2016.

Gray Matters Capital Selects 9 Startups for its 2019 Cohort of its Accelerator Program - GMC Calibrator

Gray Matters Capital, a US-based impact investor with a gender lens focused on funding enterprises working to improve access to affordable quality education and employability in India, and empowering 100 million women and girls with a purposeful life through education by 2036, has today announced the names of the start-ups, which have made it to the second cohort of its GMC Calibrator Program.

The GMC Calibrator is a Digital Self-Learning to Earning Accelerator launched by Gray Matters Capital in April 2018 with an aim to make the mobile phone a device to promote ‘Self Learning to Earning’ by improving user engagement, monetization and optimization of mobile learning platforms. This is done by understanding and implementing the principles of behavioural science and data driven decision making.

Six start-ups from India
and three start-ups from Kenya, Sierra Leone and Vietnam have made it
to the second cohort of the program commencing with  immersion days from
13^th March, 2019 in Bengaluru.

The choice of the
enterprises making it to the cohort is indicative of a diversification
of the Accelerator Program’s focus from pure-play EdTech to also include
enterprises in the skilling, livelihoods and peer-to-peer
learning space.

Announcing the names of the start-ups in GMC Calibrator’s March 2019 cohort,
Ragini Chaudhary, India CEO, Gray Matters Capital said, “We
welcome our new cohort members to the Gray Matters Capital fold and see
them align with our program mission of empowering 5 million women and
girls through their digital platforms by 2020.
We launched the GMC Calibrator last year to help edtech enterprises in
India solve key challenges they faced related to user engagement. This
year, we have taken the program global, as the same set of challenges
are being faced by companies in other countries
having similar demographics, mobile penetration and the need to bridge
gender and learning gaps besides upskilling for jobs.”

The start-ups were selected by an panel of eminent jury members comprising NASSCOM President Debjani Ghosh; Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Co-Founder, Info Edge India Ltd; Digvijay Singh, COO, Indian Angel Network, Anirudh Khusape, COO, Jiogennext and Abhinav Mathur, Founder, Million Sparks Foundation.

Start-ups from India | GMC Calibrator Mar’19 Cohort

Start-ups from India | GMC Calibrator Mar’19 Cohort

Social Enterprise	Enterprise Overview
Dcoder	Dcoder is a cloud powered IDE (online compiler) for programmers to code on mobile and tablets, enabling them to code on-the-go and compete with fellow coders in the community on algorithm based challenges in more than 35 programming languages. This Jaipur based start-up founded by Ankush Chugh has 1.2 million strong global community of coders.
InnerHour	With a team of expert psychologists, software developers and experienced healthcare management professionals; this Mumbai based start-up trains therapists to deliver emotional and psychological well-being for its clients through its online platform and app. Founded by Dr. Amit Malik and Dr. Shefali Batra, InnerHour is addressing the growing need for mental wellness in India.
Lal10	Noida based Lal10 bridges rural artisans with global markets by empowering them with mobile technology, introducing them to contemporary designs and infusing them with requisite skills to make their crafts sell in these markets. Founded by Maneet Gohil, Sanchit Govil and Albin Jose, Lal10 not just helps artisans earn better by removing the middleman, but also facilitates their skill development and participation in exhibitions; making them lead a life of respect.
Matrubharti	Matrubharti is a vernacular content community platform founded by IT engineers Mahendra Sharma and Nilesh Shah, for readers and writers in Indian languages such as Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi, besides English. This Ahmedabad based enterprise helps its community gain access to novels, and books in paperback as well as ebooks. Users can also get access to quotes for WhatsApp status updates and trending videos in regional languages.
Quest Alliance	Quest Alliance is a Bengaluru based not-for-profit trust that equips young people with 21st century skills by enabling self-learning through digital modes. It designs scalable solutions that enable educators to address critical gaps for quality education and skills training. The organization founded by Aakash Sethi also conducts teacher training programmes in schools wherein the teachers are taught to focus on themselves and make students active learners.
Skipy	Skipy is a creative play kit aimed at building foundational skills in children based on Mixed Reality that bridges the gap between the real world and the virtual world.  Founded by Ajay Das, this Bengaluru based start-up gives a child the sensory feeling of drawing on a paper along with rich and variable digital content into a single experience that is fun, entertaining and Informative.

Start-ups from other Countries | GMC Calibrator Mar’19 Cohort

Social Enterprise	Country of Origin	Enterprise Overview
Edmicro	Vietnam	Edmicro is one of the leading ed-tech platforms in Vietnam, founded by Que Nguyen and Dang Bao Linh. It was built with the vision of creating a smart self-learning ecosystem for the Vietnamese students called Onluyen.vn, that adapts to the needs of every learner and allowing them to learn, practice and master the subjects being taught in their classrooms.
Mosabi	Sierra Leone	Mosabi is the confluence of EdTech and FinTech as it creates localized animated content focused on financial inclusion for the underserved and connects them to financial service providers (FSPs) through its Android app designed for low-bandwidth settings.  This mobile learning platform creates an alternative credit score for its users through the data collected through the education offered. Leveraging its strong partnerships with financial institutions, Mosabi users concurrently get easier access to financial products. Mosabi was founded in 2016 as InvestED by Chris Czerwonka, Julie Manniot-Gaillis, Kayee Au, Dan Frost and John Roberts and currently operates in Ghana, Liberia and Senegal.
Mums Village	Kenya	Mums Village is the leading parenting website for resources, support and expert advice in Kenya. Its co-founders - Isis Nyongo and Delauno Hinson, created it as a home for Kenyan Mums to freely express themselves among a community of doulas, doctors, nutritionists, fitness experts and fellow parents. Through it’s peer-to-peer communities, it enables mothers to access and share locally relevant content and products. It aims to launch its e-commerce platform to support its existing community.

The first cohort of the program had start-ups from the domains of Test Prep for Government jobs (MadGuy Labs and Sarkari Pariksha), Teacher Capacity Building (Meghshala and Million Sparks Foundation), Vocational Training / Upskilling (Laqsh Job Skills Academy and Multibhashi) and English Education (OckyPocky and Stones2Milestones).

“From an engagement point of view, we saw impact on the lines of 30% increase in monthly retention and 20% increase in revenue for every cohort member. Three companies of the cohort raised funding during the 6 month engagement while two made it to Google Launchpad and Reliance’s Jio GenNext Accelerator. We are confident of calibrating more such success stories with our March 2019 cohort”, said Omkar Kulkarni, Program Head, GMC Calibrator.

Behavioural architecture firm Final Mile and Mobile network optimization specialists Fastah are the knowledge partners of the program, with Indian Angel Network as investment partner and Amazon’s AWS Activate as Technology partner. CL Educate is the user testing partner for the GMC Calibrator.

6 Indian & 3 Latin American Social Startups participate in Goa's 3-Day Social Entepreneurship Program

Gray Matters Capital, a US-based impact investor with a gender lens, which focuses on funding education and skilling enterprises in India as well as sector agnostic enterprises whose products and services benefit women and girls globally, will be conducting the first edition of its 3-day leadership development program in Panaji, Goa from 4^th – 6^th March, 2019.

Called ‘Tales, We Win’ (TWW), the program will witness the participation of founders of social sector start-ups from India, Colombia and Mexico as well as a global fellowship program for aspiring social enterprise practitioners.

With storytelling as its guiding theme, the program aims to help entrepreneurs in communicating their organization’s vision and story in ways which are compelling and unique, leading to a broader sphere of influence.

“Social entrepreneurs tend to embark on a steeper entrepreneurial journey. With failure rates being a lot higher, it is leadership displayed by the founding team that determines their future. Storytelling makes all the difference as it would help such entrepreneurs to define the organizational goal, influence every stakeholder – be it their teams to deliver or winning interest from investors to get funded”, said Debleena Majumdar, Director – Research and Growth, Gray Matters Capital and Founder – Kahaniya on the choice of the program adopting a storytelling theme. “Across the 3 days, participants of the program will learn to FIND, LIVE and TELL their stories of enhancing personal leadership and organizational effectiveness.”

Outlining Gray Matters Capital’s rationale behind the initiative, Joe Iarocci, Board Member, Gray Matters Capital, said, “At Gray Matters Capital, we invest in people and their ideas that have the potential to create impact by solving social issues at scale. Through TWW, we wish to answer the question of how we as investors can attract, develop and support the very best of the global social enterprise leaders to deliver the best for their organizations so that they can create impact at scale.”

International executive coaches Patrick Solomon and Priya Ramesh Perumbilavil along with Sujatha Rao, Founder & Director, Viridus Social Impact would join Joe and Debleena as the facilitators of this program at the Goa Marriott in Panaji.

The list of participants of the 2019 edition of Tales, We Win are:

Indian Social Enterprise Leaders

Name	Organization	Success Story
Alok Katiyar	MadGuy Labs	Govt exam app in vernacular
Anusha Bharadwaj	Voice4Girls	Empowering adolescent girls in India
Chitra Ravi	Chrysalis (EZ Vidya)	Developing a child centric education curriculum
Manjeet Singh	Buddy4Study	India’s largest scholarship network
Nikhil Saraf	Stones2Milestones	Creating a Nation of Readers
Soumya Velayudham	Gray Matters India (GMI)	School Assessments

Latin American Social Enterprise Leaders

Name	Organization	Success Story
Ellie Rose	Salus Holding (Mexico)	Disrupting healthcare and elderly care market | Creating jobs for women as nurses
Josele Ordas	Connovo (Mexico)	Replicating successful social businesses to scale their impact
Juan Manuel Lopera	Aulas Amigas | TOMi Digital (Colombia)	Technology for Smart Classrooms

Global Social Accelerator

Name	Organization	Success Story
Sandhya Maliakal	IDEX Accelerator	Hands-on practical work experience in the social sector in India

Social Sector Investor

Name	Organization	Success Story
Aarthi Ramasubramanian	Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS initiative	Backing visionary education and skilling entrepreneurs with innovative funding

The program would end with all participants delivering their leadership stories and how they’d use storytelling to bring about a change in their respective organizations.

Odisha-based ThinkZone Raises $104K from Gray Matters Capital to Create Jobs for Women Micro-Entrepreneurs

ThinkZone, an award winning social impact start-up from Cuttack providing high quality, low-cost education to under-served children in low resource communities, has today announced its plans of expanding its footprint in the state of Odisha by creating jobs for 300 women micro-entrepreneurs.

The startup currently employs 100+ women catering to over 2,800 children in 375 villages across nine blocks of the districts of Cuttack, Kendrapara and Bhadrak will be looking to deepen its engagement in the most backward districts of the state, besides expanding into coastal Odisha through these women.

Using an innovative ‘School-in-a-Box’ education solution, offline technology, proprietary teaching activities and class management tools, these local women would deliver quality early-grade education programs following the Teaching-at-the-Right-Level approach (an MIT evidence-based pedagogy) to improve learning outcomes of 10,000 children in the state by 2020.

This plan for expansion comes on the back of it closing post seed stage round of funding of $ 104,000 from education sector focused impact investor Gray Matters Capital under its edLABS initiative.

The prospect of ThinkZone empowering women entrepreneurs as teachers to impart quality education using innovative low cost and scalable technology which can potentially benefit nearly 2 million students in the next five years is outlined as the rationale behind the gender-lens investor’s bet on this Odisha based start-up.

ThinkZone will use the funding towards 4 key strategic initiatives of automating teacher training, refining curriculum, improving performance monitoring by integrating analytics with technology and forging partnerships with the objective to scale.

The World Bank awarded start-up had previously raised funds from BPCL, UnLtd India, D-Prize (US Distribution Inc), INVENT(Villgro) and Startup Odisha.

Throwing light on the expansion plans, Binayak Acharya, Founder – ThinkZone said, “The work we do at ThinkZone is unique because we are developing a tech-based pedagogy for first generation learners and empowering women entrepreneurs who come from a limited education backgrounds with facilitation skills to provide tech-driven quality education in rural India. We’re creating a scalable model of technology and local community interventions that can be adapted to the local context. We plan to scale our expansion through greater decentralization and partner with select public sector organizations and private MNCs to implement our early-grade learning enhancement and teacher-training programs.”

Team ThinkZone

The social enterprise is in talks to implement its pedagogy in government run primary schools as well the local Anganwadis (early-childcare centers) in the next one year.

“For any education model to be successful in India, it has to have four prerequisites: Low cost, high quality, scalability, and focus on barriers to education for poor. When I started working on ThinkZone, whoever I spoke to equated good teaching with good education. On the contrary, good education is about good learning. ThinkZone’s model emphasises learning-based education instead of teacher-centric learning. ThinkZone has a strong backend design and management team to support the relatively under-skilled community teachers. ThinkZone’s pedagogy, which is the core process of any education model, has undergone extensive reengineering to provide education delivery that is built on highly standardised elements”, Binayak said.

ThinkZone has recently partnered with Learning Equality for its Kolibiri Hardware Grants Program, which is a Google.org funded initiative. This will enable it to upskill teachers and help students learn at their own pace.

Hyderabad's Ignis Careers Raises $150k Funding from Gray Matters Capital to Digitally Train 1 lakh Students in 500 Schools

Ignis Careers, a Hyderabad-based social enterprise providing capacity-building programs for teachers in government and affordable private schools, has today announced that it has developed a digital platform for imparting its Life Skills training program targeting first generation learners from low income communities.

This comes on the back of the funding of $ 150,000 it received from Atlanta headquartered education sector focused impact investor Gray Matters Capital through its edLABS initiative, paving the way for it to digitize the teacher manuals for improving classroom delivery efficiency.

Using customized content and interactive technology to teach English integrated Life skills

The Life Skills curriculum offered by Ignis Careers is unique in the sense that it integrates English language learning to help students not just get acquainted with the language but to also prepare them for employment opportunities in the future.

The digital platform developed by it will serve as an interactive multi-media enabled instruction manual that will help teachers understand instructions clearly and help them to enable a more interactive learning atmosphere in classrooms.

“We aim at breathing purpose into the Indian education system, weaning it away from practices of rote learning and mindless focus on marks. Our life skills focus would empower students with critical thinking, advocacy skills, situation adaptability skills and self-management skills so that the students would go on to build a purposeful life. By improving their English skills along with life skills, they learn to seek and access information for themselves, and eventually learn to make informed decisions in life,” said Rennis Joseph, Co-Founder and CEO, Ignis Careers.

Expansion Plans

Currently present in 9 centres in the states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Delhi, Ignis Careers’ curriculum has been adopted by more than 200 schools benefiting nearly 57,000 students through capacity building of 1788 teachers.

Post the funding and the development of the digital platform, Ignis Careers will look to expand its presence to 16 more centres in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra by FY 2021, catering to 1.08 lakh students through 4400 teachers across 400 schools in the Affordable Private School (APS) segment and 100 government schools.

The funding would also be used to strengthen the leadership team by recruiting senior administrative personnel.

Rural Teacher Fellowship

Ignis Careers runs a Rural Teacher Fellowship program in partnership with Venture Capital Fund -Acumen and HDFC Bank, wherein teachers are recruited from the communities targeted for impact and trained in English skills and best-in-class teaching practices. These teachers then return to government schools in their communities to improve the skills of the students attending, thus creating a sustainable model of simultaneous teacher and student training.

Ignis Careers is a social enterprise that develops capacities in English and life skills through its programs with the teachers for the children of first generation learners from low income communities. Since its inception in 2009, Ignis has impacted over 10,000 teachers and 250,000 underserved children across Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, and New Delhi through a wide range of customised learning programs. Its engagements are guided by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that emphasise the importance of all children and young people receiving a purposeful basic education by 2030. Over the years, through their flagship program Rural Teacher Fellowship program, Ignis has designed and delivered a culturally relevant age and level appropriate context based curriculum in sixteen villages in Khammam district, Telangana and three schools in Aya Nagar, New Delhi. The program has involved multiple stakeholders at the community level and resulted in improved skills, reduction in attrition and gradual change in the mind-set of under-served communities towards education.

The prime focus of the programme is to develop the language skills of the students in an interactive and joyful manner where language acquisition becomes a part of the lived experience. The programme builds capacities of teachers along with their children in improving their language and child-centric teaching skills. Year-long training support for teachers at their school campus to help them break away from practices focussed on rote learning and adopt activity based participatory methodologies that ensure quick internalisation and constant practice of concepts.

Post $125K Funding by Gray Matters Capital, Edu-Finance Platform GyanDhan to Diversify into Loans for Skill Building

Delhi-based Online Education Financing platform, GyanDhan, which has since 2016 enabled over 2,000 loans via banks to students in India to pursue higher studies abroad, has today announced that it will create a ranking of vocational training institutes in India using data insights to tailor loan offerings for individuals taking up reskilling, upskilling and vocational training courses.

The education loan lending platform will be diversifying its loan portfolio to include loans for skill building courses besides study abroad financing offerings.

The piloting of this new loan offering comes on the back of the $125,000 funding by Gray Matters Capital via its edLABS initiative. The US based impact investor had led the $110 million funding round of Washington based overseas higher education loan provider MPower Financing in December 2018, making GyanDhan its second such enterprise in its portfolio.

The funding was made with the objective of GyanDhan plugging skill gaps prevalent in India’s workforce by making access to hassle free and affordable loans for vocational training courses a possibility.

Founded in 2015 by IIT alumni Ankit Mehra and Jainesh Sinha, GyanDhan had earlier raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding, in 2016, from Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs with participation from Harvard Angels, and other individual investors including Pravin Gandhi, Partner- Seedfund Advisors in his personal capacity. Prior to that, the startup had received angel funding from Satyen Kothari, founder of Cube and Citrus Pay, to fund operations from the concept phase to their first loan disbursal.

Speaking about this business development, Ankit Mehra, Co-Founder and CEO, GyanDhan said, “As per the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, the number of individuals requiring training across 34 sectors is estimated at 126.87 million for the period 2017-2022. Loans for skill-building courses not only opens a new revenue stream for us, but also helps us impact more lives through gainful employment.” He went on to add, “GyanDhan will be looking at disbursing over 45000 skill-building loans within the next three years."

“Data science is at the core of what we are building at GyanDhan. Our target for the domestic segment is to create a ranking of training institutes basis the quality of education, placement statistics, and future demand for such training. Higher the rank, better will be the terms of the skill building loan sanctioned.”, outlined Jainesh Sinha, Co-Founder and COO, GyanDhan.

The fintech start-up will use its proprietary student employability assessment framework – GyanDhan Score, to help its partner NBFCs and banks to structure skill building loan offerings linked to employability-based outcomes. It aims to make it the de-facto standard for originating and pricing student loans in India. In addition, GyanDhan is also developing behavioral scorecards to assess the loan applicant’s willingness to pay.

To recall, in August last year, an another student education financing platform, Propelld, had raised $250,000 in seed funding from Indian Angel Network and IAN Fund. Propelld is also an IIT alumni founded startup.

Online Test-prep Platform MadGuy Labs Raises Funds from Gray Matters Capital's edLABS Initiative

Gray Matters Capital, an impact investor focused on investing in enterprises working to improve access to affordable quality education and employability in India, has today announced that it has selected MadGuy Labs, a Hyderabad based online test-prep platform for government jobs to be funded under its edLABS initiative.

edLABS is Gray Matters Capital’s early stage education and skilling sector focused innovation portfolio that funds for-profit enterprises of ‘visionary edu-preneurs’ who are building breakthrough solutions that address education gaps, 21st century skills and future of work for the Indian mass market.

The funding announcement was made at the Customer Story Day of the GMC Calibrator - the Mobile EdTech Accelerator Program focused on improving User Engagement on mobile education and skilling apps by in which MadGuy Labs was selected to be a part of the first cohort.

Founded in by IIT Roorkee alumni Alok Katiyar, Sanjay Jagarwal and Vishal Meena, MadGuy Labs claims to be India's first Artficial Intelligence (Al) driven platform for various government jobs exams preparation in regional languages. It said to be having a unique algorithms with which a student can prepare for up to 50 exams simultaneously with no extra effort.

Outlining the investment rationale, Smita Sircar, Innovations Director – edLABS and Ecosystem, Gray Matters Capital, said, ““The complete opportunity path from discovery of applicable government jobs to preparation via customized learning towards those multiple jobs on a basic smartphone that is affordable, in vernacular got edLABS excited to invest. This is especially true to create more opportunities for women to access quality content in the comfort of their homes. We hope that edLABS funding will enable these three IIT-Roorkee founders to grow more to provide more choice and agency for the last mile."

A Strong Tech Product Offering Personalized Learning Experience in Vernacular -

• Automated Preparation Tracker to automate the systematic study for students and allow them to study for multiple exams at the same time.




• Became an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform in June 2018


• Currently offering services in 5 languages – Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Hindi and English

Improved User Engagement on the MadGuy Labs App through the GMC Calibrator

• By sending timely personalized notifications based on the user persona, the Daily Average Time Spent (Per User) up by 30% (11 Min to 15 min).



• By enabling initial free content, Daily Active Users increased by 15% (7,000 Daily to 9,000 daily).



• Small tweaks on payment screen helped double the number of transactions happening in the app.

edLABS, which provides flexible financing up to USD 150,000, had funded Jaipur based turnkey STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) solutions provider SRJNA in September 2018 and will be looking to close the calendar year with 3 more investments. In 2019, edLABS will be focusing on investing in skilling, employability and livelihood solutions towards reducing barriers for women and girls.

edLABS is an initiative of Gray Matters Capital in India to provide very early stage funding to ‘visionary edu-preneurs’ of for-profit enterprises to help them build breakthrough solutions for Indian mass market that address education gaps, 21st century skills and the future of work.

In line with Gray Matters Capital’s focus of providing access to affordable quality education and employability leading to a future job ready workforce with 21st century skills, edLABS will be committing $8 million over the next 3 years and will be looking to make a maximum 12 new investments every year.

Jaipur-based Experiential Learning Startup SRJNA Raises Funding from Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS

Jaipur based SRJNA, a brand of Elation Edtech Pvt. Ltd., which helps schools to integrate hands on, affordable and turnkey STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) solutions in their regular curriculum by setting up and facilitating Innovation and Tinkering Labs, has today announced that it has raised funds from US-based impact investor Gray Matters Capital under its edLABS initiative.

Just last month, edLABS initiative made an investment of $180,000 in Kidovators, a skill learning platform of Bengaluru based ADD-on-GYAN Educational Services Pvt. Ltd..

edLABS, Gray Matters Capital’s early stage education and skilling sector focused innovation portfolio, is committing $8 million over the next 3 years to for-profit enterprises to help ‘visionary edu-preneurs’ build breakthrough solutions that address education gaps, 21st century skills and future of work for the Indian mass market.

The funding of SRJNA marks the first of the four investments to be made by Gray Matters Capital through edLABS in September, after closing of a seed round funding of US$ 150,000 in 21^st century skill learning platform – Kidovators in July 2018.

The company has also received funding Keiretsu Forum – a global investment community of accredited private equity angel investors, venture capitalists and institutional investors and SucSEED Venture Partners in this round.

“We at SRJNA are making it easier for schools to upgrade themselves as a STEM powered school with our comprehensive end to end offerings”, said Sharad Bansal, Co-Founder and CEO, SRJNA. “We are happy to have won the interest of investors like Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS who bring in the breadth and depth of domain expertise and high impact network in the education space, beyond capital. With the current round of funding from edLABS, Keiritsu and SucSEED Ventures, SRJNA will look at augmenting its content R&D, technology and building a channel partner network for faster growth across the 1.5 million addressable school market in the country,” he added.

[caption id="attachment_126012" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Students in SRJNA's Innovation Lab[/caption]

Speaking on the development, Ragini Bajaj Chaudhary, India CEO, Gray Matters Capital, said, “Start-ups like SRJNA have understood the importance of scientific temper and cultivating the spirit of curiosity, creativity and imagination among young minds – which sow the seeds for future innovations. We would like more girls to get interested in STEM to bridge the gender gap and believe that there is a link between imparting STEM concepts in an experiential manner to improvements in learning outcomes. Our funding of SRJNA is a step to make a difference to the lives of over 250 million school students.”

Throwing light on the investment rationale, Smita Sircar, Innovations Director – edLABS and Ecosystem Development said, “We met the team last year and have been tracking the progress since then. SRJNA scores high on innovation quotient as it takes STEM experiential learning into classrooms; has a robust value-chain for delivery and has shown traction in scaling its revenue. It also aligns with our ecosystem work to enable 21 century relevant learning environments in schools and SRJNA does so via tiered pricing and product structure to cater to the broad spectrum of demand in the market.” 

Fostering Innovation and Creativity through Tinkering

SRJNA sells its STEM kits directly to schools and has facilitated the set-up of its labs in 100+ schools benefitting 50,000+ students and 1000+ teachers across 26 cities in 15 states.

[caption id="attachment_126011" align="aligncenter" width="700"] SRJNA's Tinkering Lab[/caption]

STEM Education is key to any nation's success in 21st century especially Interactive Learning. With the Government of India’s NITI Ayog announcing the set up of 30,000 innovation play workspaces in the form of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) for students in grades 8 to 12 in the next 3 years, SRJNA is well placed to benefit from the Government’s flagship program Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) with its dedicated studio labs it sets up in schools to transform ideas into reality via 3D printing, Robotics, IOT, as well as through mechanical and electrical tools in STEM Tinkering Kits.

Besides the Tinkering Labs, SRJNA also facilitates experiential learning of STEM concepts in K10 classrooms through its Innovation Labs comprising teaching aids and student assessments over an online platform. It adopts a 5 dimensional learning approach of seeing, touching, feeling, understanding and performing which help students see the concepts taught by the teacher function in real-time in the classroom.

“Keiretsu Forum seeks to back promising entrepreneurs with ‘smart money,’ where the network’s members open many doors to portfolio companies, and SRJNA is an example where we’ve been able to add considerable value in addition to the money our members invested,” said Denny Kurien, President & CEO of Keiretsu Forum. Keiretsu investors who threw their weight behind SRJNA included Dr. Sushil Vachani, former director of IIM Bangalore and Chand Das, former CEO of ITC’s education business.

“Our Investors Personally observed the passion and fire in founders’ thinking and vision for future of education in India. Their founding team, toolkits and success with their initial customer base was instrumental in our decision to participate in this round to enable their next stage of growth. Our Investors wanted to participate and contribute to system that helped us succeed in life” quoted Vikrant Varshney, Managing Partner of SucSEED Venture Partners.

SRJNA has also been selected by Govt. of Rajasthan under itsiStart initiative and is among the seven start-ups in the state to be funded through its Bhamashah Techno Fund in June this year.

Recent Investments by Gray Matters Capital

Gray Matter Capital has recently shortlisted eight participating startup organizations in the first cohort of its accelerator program – GMC Calibrator that was launched earlier in April this year.

In February, Chrysalis, a Chennai-based education reform startup raised a pre-series A funding round from Gray Matters Capital as well.

In the same month, Bengaluru based edtech startup IMAX Program raised $13.5 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, LGT Impact Ventures and existing investor Aspada.

AddressHealth Raises $1.5M in Series A Funding

AddressHealth, Indian primary healthcare network exclusively for children, has announced $1.5 million in Series A funding led by Gray Matters Capital with participation from existing investor, Unitus Seed Fund. The company, which runs innovative school-based neighbourhood clinics and school health programs, will use the investment to expand the model to other schools in Bangalore & other geographies. As per estimates from Unified District Information System for Education, there are more than 2 lakh schools in urban India, a large number of them catering to low and middle income population. Bangalore alone has nearly 2,500 private, unaided schools. By leveraging partnerships with schools, AddressHealth is able to reduce costs associated with retail healthcare while simultaneously increasing the reach of affordable preventive healthcare.

The disruptive 'School Clinic' model

AddressHealth, which is currently Bangalore's largest school health provider, has reached more than 1 lakh children through on-site services and screening programs to identify health issues and provided early intervention to prevent them from suffering as young adults.

Mrs. Sashi Anand, Principal of Pratibha Bala Mandira school said, “I am very glad that our institution is associated with AddressHealth since 2011. A team of committed doctors and nurses are providing comprehensive health programs which comprise thorough health check-ups, health education to students and teachers, environmental audit, counselling and nutrition audit.”

Schools can play a crucial role in pediatric health and their position in providing inclusive health care is a concept that is finding traction, not just in India, but worldwide. “School health programs save lives,” said Hesky Kutscher, Founder & CEO, Caredox, a free digital health tools startup for K12 public schools in the US which recently received $4.3M in venture capital and debt funding.

“With its disruptive market-based model for pediatric healthcare, AddressHealth has served more than 100,000 children already; what I believe to be a fraction of their future potential,” said Bob Pattillo, veteran impact investor and CEO & Founder of Gray Matters Capital. “We are excited to partner in their growth story and scale across India to serve the masses effectively.”

“We believe that the unique and powerful service delivery model in partnership with schools will help AddressHealth scale effectively, not only in providing curative care, but also in providing preventive intervention for infectious & non communicable diseases,” said Dave Richards, Managing Partner at Unitus Seed Fund. “We are happy to partner with them in their growth story as they make India’s children healthier.”

Experienced Healthcare Services Team

AddressHealth was founded by doctor entrepreneurs Anand Lakshman and Anoop Radhakrishnan.

Dr. Anand Lakshman has significant experience leading public health programs that reached more than 1.14 crore (114 million) children. Dr. Anoop Radhakrishnan has been involved with setting up 2 startups soon after his MBA from IIM – Lucknow. The goal of the founders is to address the health of at least 4 lakh children by 2018.

“The funding allows us to expand the reach of our unique model of healthcare, which leverages schools, to deliver comprehensive primary healthcare to children proactively, at a low cost,” said Dr Anand Lakshman, CEO of AddressHealth. “We will use technology to further expand our reach, reduce costs and promote proactive preventive health action by parents and schools, to make children healthier and happier,” added Dr Anoop Radhakrishnan, co-founder of AddressHealth.

Reiterating the importance of preventive care, one of the parents whose child was treated by AddressHealth, Mrs. Megha, said, “Thanks to AddressHealth, my child is now active in sports and I am now confident about him playing out in the open without the fear of an asthma attack. This is possible now as we know what triggers an attack and we are able to safely avoid it.”

Unitus Capital acted as the financial advisor to this transaction while K Law was the legal advisor.

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