Toppr, the personalised e-learning and online test preparation platform, recently raised a debt funding round worth $2.3 Mn from Alteria Capial – a new investment fund launched by Ajay Hattangdi and Vinod Murali.
The Mumbai-based company was founded in 2013 by Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti to assist students preparing for competitive entrance exams such as IIT, JEE Mains and Advanced, NEET, BITSAT, etc… The company provides e-learning solutions for students from 5th to 12th Grades in programs that includes questions, solutions, concepts, practice tests, and videos for app subscribers.
“The Alteria team understands the needs of entrepreneurs and is sensitive to their requirements. Venture debt has been a very useful tool to grow our business without additional dilution and we are happy to have Alteria as our partner in this journey,” said Zishaan Hayath, co-founder and CEO of Toppr.
This is the seventh time that the ed-tech startup raised funding which amounts to $23.5 Mn inclusive of equity and debt financing. Its last funding round happened in October 2017 when existing investors, SAIF Partners, Helion Ventures and FIL Capital Management poured the sum of $6.92 Mn in a Series B funding round.
Additionally, in February 2016, the Mumbai-based firm acquired ed-tech startup Manch and Toppr is pushing aggressively its plans to expand its operations throughout India and reach as many students as possible.
“The needs of Indian students cannot be met solely through classrooms and using technology well to improve personalization and convenience for students while still providing high-quality content and monetizing for it, has been the key to Toppr’s success,” shared co-founder and managing partner of Alteria Capital, Vinod Murali.
Toppr is now targeting a growing its subscription base 20 times in its junior grades and 15 times in its senior grades by 2021, which will make the platform a $500 Mn revenue startup. A recent Google report, KPMG, showed that the ed-tech market has the potential to be worth $1.96 Bn by 2021 while it is currently worth $247 Mn and ed-tech startups are aggressively strengthening its services to acquire as much market share as possible.