Smartivity Labs, an Augmented Reality (AR) EdTech startup, recently raised $2 Mn from Ashish Kacholia, an early venture investor. The funds raised will serve to scale Smartivity’s operations in international markets. Smartivity Labs is also backed by S Chand Group, a publishing company based in Delhi.
We closed 2017-18 at $1.4 Mn at around 2.5x to 3x year-on-year growth. This year, we are projecting around $3.5 Mn. We are also on the verge of finalizing newer markets like Japan, China, Russia and Western Europe,
said Tushar A Amin, co-founder of Smartivity Labs.
The association between Smartivity Labs and S Chand Group is to develop academic content for subjects such as science, technology, English and Mathematics (STEM) as well as arts in order to provide a learning-based DIY kit. The kit is used to provide interactive activities such as puzzles and coloring with a touch of Augmented Reality, in the sense that digital objects can be superimposed over one another.
With this round of funding, the startup has so far raised four rounds of funding amounting to a total of $3.2 Mn. In 2016, the startup raised $1 Mn Pre-Series A funding round led by S Chand Group with the participation of investment firm AdvantEdge Partners, Singapore-based fund CFG Offshore Holdings, Silicon Valley-based fund Tandem Capital, among others.
Smartivity Labs saw the day in 2015 by IIT Delhi alumni Apoorv Gupta, Rajat Jain, Ashwini Kumar, and Tushar Amin, Pixel Juice proprietor. Publishing company S Chand is believed to hold around 23.29% shares in Smartivity Labs on a fully diluted basis.
Main investor in this recent funding round, Ashish Kacholia, who owns Lucky Investment Managers, is reported to hold shares of up to $117 Mn in several company, according to Bloomberg. The investor bought shares in companies such as chemicals company Nocil, Steel pipe maker APL Apollo Tubes Ltd, granite producer Pokarna Ltd, among others.
EdTech in India is one of the prominent rising markets in India with forecasts stating that the market will grow by 8x in the coming five years, according to reports from Google and KPMG. The market is touted to be worth $1.96 Bn by 2021 while it is currently worth $247 Mn. The overall Indian education sector is presently worth $100 Bn, EdTech companies are now pushing aggressively for the expansion of digital education.