OnlineTyari Acquires Plix, a Photo and Video Sharing App

Michael & Susan Dell Foundation backed test preparation startup OnlineTyari, today announced the acquisition of Plix, a photo and video sharing platform. Plix’s talented skill sets in the field of Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition will be used by OnlineTyari to augment adaptive learning and bring more value to OnlineTyari users in creating a more personalized experience on its platform. Plix was founded by Apurv Chawla in 2015. Plix intelligently informs users which of their friends might have their photos, which they may not have shared in the past and can be used to easily request/share entire albums of photos and videos. This is OnlineTyari’s first acquisition.

OnlineTyari and Plix, both Gurgaon based companies, will integrate within the next couple of months. With Plix’s acquisition, OnlineTyari will now be 75 employees strong.

Vipin Agarwal, Co-Founder and CEO said, “The acquisition of Plix is strategic to our vision and mission. Our goal is to improve education and skill development for more than 100 million Indians each year. With Plix, and the talent they bring to our team in the field of machine learning, image recognition and analytics, we will be able to deliver on multiple use cases for our users that will solve challenges around making the platform more intelligent and scalable. We look forward to working with and building greater value for our users with Apurv and his high energy team”.

OnlineTyari is a mobile-first multilingual platform for skill development and career preparation. It offers customized, curated and vernacular test preparation content, delivered through very low internet bandwidths. The preparation materials include full mock tests and current affairs articles. The app has more than 4 million downloads and helps 400,000 Indians every day in their quest for developing various skills.

Bhola Ram Meena the Founder and CTO at OnlineTyari mentioned – “Plix acquisition adds an excellent technology team to OnlineTyari. We are working towards building the next truly Indian technology platform that helps people of India to study in their local language and to develop the much-needed solution to their problem of self-development and career progression”.

“OnlineTyari has disrupted the market for test prep in India by creating a personalized, data-backed solution. Its platform approach-- that curates content from multiple partners-- enables them to provide high quality exam content that serves as a one-stop solution. With our expertise in pattern recognition and machine learning, we look forward to working on their technology platform to enhance the user experience. We are excited to be a part of OnlineTyari and of their growth trajectory”, said Apurv.

Vishal Bhargava – Managing Partner at Instalabs commented – “This acquisition validates our belief in the Plix team, who are at the very cutting edge of pattern recognition and machine learning. The technology is currently being used for more efficient image/video sharing but can potentially have very powerful use cases in the edutech space, where OnlineTyari has shown tremendous traction.”

In November, OnlineTyari raised an equity investment from the Michael And Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF), 3One4 Capital (an early stage venture capital fund backed by Mohandas Pai), Contrarian Capital, Tracxn Labs and couple of other investors and angels.

OnlineTyari Raises Series A Funding from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Contrarian Capital, Others

OnlineTyari (OT) has announced that it has raised an equity investment from the Michael And Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF), 3One4 Capital (an early stage venture capital fund backed by Mohandas Pai), Contrarian Capital, Tracxn Labs and couple of other investors and angels. MSDF is the lead investor in OT’s Series A investment round of INR 20 crores. Existing investors in OnlineTyari including Vikram Chachra (Partner at Eight Capital), Globevestor, Advantedge, Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar (Co-founders of Ixigo) also participated in the current round.

OT offers a mobile application that allows highly customized, curated and vernacular test preparation content delivered through very low internet bandwidths. It offers a full suite of solutions including entrance tests for public sector units, government jobs and higher education institutes. The comprehensive preparation materials include full mock tests, current affairs articles and other study material on a platform where candidates can practice, benchmark their performance and improve.

Since its launch, OT has become one of the fastest growing edtech platforms today - growing ten times in the past 12 months in terms of time spent by users on average, monthly with nearly 4 million downloads with over 400,000 daily active users.  The funds are planned to be used towards expanding OnlineTyari’s operations – to offer the platform across all major Indian languages by 2017 end. The funds will aso be used for opportunistic acquisitions in synergistic businesses across technology and education domains.

OnlineTyari was founded in 2014 by Vipin Agarwal and Bhola Ram Meena, both graduates of IIT Kanpur. They have have extensive technology and startup experience and have worked in an advisory role with the Government of India on the Digital India initiative.

Vipin Agarwal, CEO and Co-Founder, Online Tyari, said, “India is witnessing a paradigm shift toward online educational services. We are proud to be at the center of this and excited to partner with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation as we move into the next phase of our growth. This partnership will help us introduce new business best practices and to achieve the scale needed to reach our goal: improving education and skill development for more than 100 million people every year across India.”

Bhola Ram Meena, Founder, OnlineTyari, said, “The market for government and public sector entrance exams is huge with more than 20 million aspirants every year. These exams are very different from top-end engineering college entrance exams, and we have customized our solution for this large, yet unique target segment. We believe our market advantage comes from the learnings that can be generated by the sheer number of users on our platform.”

Mohandas Pai, re-investing in the Company via 3one4 Capital, had this to say: "India's education system serves the largest student population on the planet, and it is imperative that we prepare this generation to be equipped with skills that make them globally competitive. A vital component of an inclusive system is to ensure that students have access to the highest quality content in the languages and mediums of their choosing. Online Tyari has done tremendously well to deliver on its mission and address the concerns of over 10 million Indians writing the competitive exams for government jobs in multiple languages. Having proven product-market fit for this highly-engaged adoption segment, the company can now go deeper to become an intelligent platform for the best quality multi-lingual educational content in the country. We are proud to be part of this mission and excited to be working with this team to scale this value proposition."

Vikram Chachra, Partner at Eight Capital, said, “Vipin and Bhola belong to an exceptional breed of founders. They combine the clarity of vision and exceptional execution necessary to create India's largest mobile education platform in less than 24 months. The current round of funding will enable OnlineTyari to achieve its mission of transforming the lives of tens of millions of young rural and semi-urban Indians across the nation.”

Prachi Windlass, Education Director, India, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, said, “OT has already disrupted the market for test prep in India by creating a personalized, data-backed solution for a large but often ignored market segment. The platform approach-- that curates content from multiple partners-- enables them to provide high quality exam content with a very short time-to-market. This is very important for this market segment as students may appear for multiple exams and need a one-stop solution. OT will play a huge role in helping students from smaller towns and low-income families access test prep services.”

OnlineTyari Close to Raising $5M in Series A Round from US Based Fund

Test preparation platform OnlineTyari which has seen over two million downloads and 300,000 active users, is close to raising $5 million in a Series A round from US-based funds by the end of August.

“We are in talks with an international fund in the education domain, which can give us better access to knowledge and other investors in our sector,” Vipin Agarwal, co-founder, OnlineTyari, told DealStreetAsia. The company had raised $0.75 million (about Rs 5 crore) in September from investors like venture capital firm 500 startups, Mohandas Pai, Tandem Capital, Vikram Chachra of Eight Capital and Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and chief executive of IxIgo.

Founded by IIT Kanpur graduates Vipin Agarwal and Bhola Ram Meena in 2014, OnlineTyari through its multilingual app and website, allows people to prepare for job-oriented tests including civil services, banking services, UPSC, GATE and state government jobs. The portal has tied up with coaching institutes, independent tutors and publishers across the country to provide authentic and contemporary material for exam preparation. Those appearing for competitive exams can also buy question banks, online tests, articles and e-books on the platform.

The startup offers its courses in English, Hindi and Marathi at present, and plans to expand the offering to 15 Indian languages on its app. “We are trying to organize the unbranded content experts and coaching centres,” Agarwal said.

According to various consultancies, the worth of test preparation sector is estimated to be anywhere between $5 billion and $20 billion. In May 2016, PaGaLGuY’s test preparation platform Prepathon raised pre-series A funding from Blume Ventures. In April this year, online test preparation platform Oliveboard secured an undisclosed amount of funding from India Educational Investment Fund (IEIF), an early stage impact investment fund established by Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. And in October last year, Toppr, a Mumbai-based startup offering an online platform for students to prepare for entrance tests examinations, had raised $2 million from venture debt provider InnoVen Capital.

OnlineTyari Close to Raising $5M in Series A Round from US Based Fund

Test preparation platform OnlineTyari which has seen over two million downloads and 300,000 active users, is close to raising $5 million in a Series A round from US-based funds by the end of August.

“We are in talks with an international fund in the education domain, which can give us better access to knowledge and other investors in our sector,” Vipin Agarwal, co-founder, OnlineTyari, told DealStreetAsia. The company had raised $0.75 million (about Rs 5 crore) in September from investors like venture capital firm 500 startups, Mohandas Pai, Tandem Capital, Vikram Chachra of Eight Capital and Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and chief executive of IxIgo.

Founded by IIT Kanpur graduates Vipin Agarwal and Bhola Ram Meena in 2014, OnlineTyari through its multilingual app and website, allows people to prepare for job-oriented tests including civil services, banking services, UPSC, GATE and state government jobs. The portal has tied up with coaching institutes, independent tutors and publishers across the country to provide authentic and contemporary material for exam preparation. Those appearing for competitive exams can also buy question banks, online tests, articles and e-books on the platform.

The startup offers its courses in English, Hindi and Marathi at present, and plans to expand the offering to 15 Indian languages on its app. “We are trying to organize the unbranded content experts and coaching centres,” Agarwal said.

According to various consultancies, the worth of test preparation sector is estimated to be anywhere between $5 billion and $20 billion. In May 2016, PaGaLGuY’s test preparation platform Prepathon raised pre-series A funding from Blume Ventures. In April this year, online test preparation platform Oliveboard secured an undisclosed amount of funding from India Educational Investment Fund (IEIF), an early stage impact investment fund established by Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. And in October last year, Toppr, a Mumbai-based startup offering an online platform for students to prepare for entrance tests examinations, had raised $2 million from venture debt provider InnoVen Capital.