Thursday, December 19

Tag: education

Rajasthan Partners With Cisco For Connected Learning Solution
INDIA

Rajasthan Partners With Cisco For Connected Learning Solution

Rajasthan education department has partnered with US-based technology firm Cisco to promote digital learning across the state using virtual digital room solutions. "This initiative aims to enhance the quality of education through digital learning for academia to connect, collaborate, create and share content across 12 centres of State Institute for Education Management and Training (SIEMAT) in the state," Cisco said in a statement. The financial details of the partnership were, however, not disclosed. Under this association, Cisco and SIEMAT have committed to 50,000 manhours of training annually through the virtual digital classrooms. Cisco has partnered with the Rajasthan government to establish Digital Learning Solution Rooms (DLSRs) which will deploy virtual digital classroo...
Online Education Platform Coursera Focussing on Tie-Up With Indian Enterprises
News

Online Education Platform Coursera Focussing on Tie-Up With Indian Enterprises

Online education firm Coursera is focussing on partnering Indian enterprises for corporate learning solutions as part of its efforts to expand its presence in the country. Coursera, which counts India as its third largest learner market after the US and China, has 1.3 million users here. Globally, it has a user base of 19 million learners. "India is a priority market for us in 2016 and we are making significant push here. We are building features into the product specific to local needs," Coursera Senior Advisor Nikhil Sinha said. He added that the company is also in discussion with various Indian educational institutions for offering courses through its platform to global users. Sinha said the aim is to be a tool that people use for both "educational benefits and career ...
JSW Ventures Gets Sebi Nod For Startup Investments
News

JSW Ventures Gets Sebi Nod For Startup Investments

JSW Ventures, the venture capital arm of the JSW Group, today said it has received clearance from markets regulator Sebi to begin investing in the country. JSW Ventures would focus on providing early-stage funding to technology-enabled startups operating in the education, healthcare, financial services, SaaS (software as a service) and enterprise software space. The fund will have an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore which it will invest over a three-year period. "JSW Ventures, the venture capital arm of the JSW Group, has received the mandatory clearances from Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), paving the way for it to begin investing," a statement by JSW said. "Technology innovation is happening across sectors, from old-fashioned verticals like real estate to research-driv...
Education Start-up Cuemath Raises $4 million
FUNDING

Education Start-up Cuemath Raises $4 million

Cuelearn Pvt Ltd also known as Cuemath runs an Education start-up has raised $4 million from Sequoia venture capital firm and existing investor Unitus Seed Fund. With this round of funding, Cuemath aims to expand to international markets and increase the number of teachers that use its platform from 1,200 to 5,000. The firm declined to say how many students use its platform. “What we are essentially saying is that we don’t require someone to teach actively. Unlike others, in our case, the system is doing the teaching, and not the teacher. Math is the biggest need for children. Fitting many subjects into the same time slot will dilute the learning,” said Manan Khurma, founder of Cuemath. The firm had in August raised an undisclosed amount from Alok Mittal, former managing director of ...
Naspers Invests $60 Million in Online-Learning Startup Udemy
FUNDING

Naspers Invests $60 Million in Online-Learning Startup Udemy

Udemy, a global marketplace for learning and teaching online, today announced a strategic investment of $60 million from Naspers through its Naspers Ventures division. Larry Illg, CEO of Naspers Ventures, is joining Udemy’s Board of Directors. Udemy plans to use the new capital to continue its strong international momentum, including growing its localized course content library and product offerings to meet the global demand for online learning. The investment is a follow-on to Udemy’s $65 million Series D round of financing from June of 2015. Over the past year, Udemy has experienced significant growth, particularly among its international business. With more than 40,000 courses now available in 80 different languages, Udemy offers the largest selection of online course content. ...
IIM-A Offer e-learning To Deliver Management Education Through Distance Learning
News

IIM-A Offer e-learning To Deliver Management Education Through Distance Learning

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) will launch e-learning programmes to deliver management education through distance learning. The institute will launch several programmes in the coming months in collaboration with NIIT Ltd and Hughes Education, companies that provide online learning services, the leading business school said in a statement here. The institute has signed agreements with both the companies to deliver management education content using electronic mode in the form of synchronous studio-to-classroom programmes. "Management education is going through dramatic changes, especially with regard to infusion of technology challenging the traditional content delivery model," it said. "IIM-A is set to launch several e-learning programmes over the next fe...
Online Learning Startup EdCast Acquired Online Sales Training Company Sales University
ACQUISITION

Online Learning Startup EdCast Acquired Online Sales Training Company Sales University

Online learning startup EdCast acquired online sales training company Sales University, previously known as WAGmob, for an undisclosed amount. This is the first acquisition the education platform has made after closing a $16 million Series-B round led by GE Asset Management in April. Sales University, founded by former Microsoft engineering executives, is headquartered in Seattle, US and Indore in India. "Besides innovative features like video role play and product training, Sales University provide access to some marquee influencers like Tom Hopkins and Ken Thoreson. Most importantly, they have the best mobile-first sales training app that we could find," said Karl Mehta, founder of EdCast. However, Mehta refused to disclose the terms of the deal. Sales University claims ...
Smartivity, an Augmented Reality Based Education Technology Startup Has Raised Rs 6.6 crore Funding
FUNDING

Smartivity, an Augmented Reality Based Education Technology Startup Has Raised Rs 6.6 crore Funding

An augmented reality-based education technology startup Smartivity, has raised about Rs 6.6 crore in a pre-Series-A round of funding led by publishing firm S Chand and early-stage investment firm AdvantEdge Partners. The round also saw participation from Singapore-based fund CFG Offshore Holdings, Silicon Valley-based fund Tandem Capital and a clutch of angel investors. The company said the funds will also be used to expand its reach and aim for the global market. “With this round of funding, we want to expand our current portfolio in STEM and augmented reality products to provide interactive learning to kids and also develop IoT (internet of things)-enabled toys and robot-led learning for kids,” said Ashwini Kumar, cofounder of Smartivity. “Smartivity has shown tremendous gro...
Ex-IAS Officer Led Startup Unacademy Raised $500,000
FUNDING

Ex-IAS Officer Led Startup Unacademy Raised $500,000

Led by Ex-IAS officer, Unacademy a education technology platform has raised $500,000 led by Blume Ventures. Google's Rajan Anandan, CommonFloor founder Sumit Jain and redBus founder Phanindra Sama, among others has also participated. "Unacademy's vision is to distribute knowledge of the educators and innovators in the form of mini courses having lessons of not more than 10 minutes each," said Gaurav Munjal, CEO, Unacademy, who started the company along with 24-year old Roman Saini. "Delivery of education in India needs radical shifts," and Karthik Reddy,Managing Partner, Blume Ventures. "Unacademy is a manifestation of the team's vision to make all forms of educative material so intuitive and accessible that learning becomes extremely interesting and scalable," he added. ALSO ...
49% Kids Can’t Live Without Social Media – Kaspersky Lab Study
ANALYSIS

49% Kids Can’t Live Without Social Media – Kaspersky Lab Study

Kids today spend more of their lives online than offline, according to research carried out by Kaspersky Lab and iconKids and Youth. As kids grow older, offline activities tend to transfer to the online world. Moreover, three-in-four children prefer to use the Internet to get information, rather than any other source. These findings show that children can become even more vulnerable online without parental supervision and support. Children stay close to their mobile devices all day, and even tend to sleep with them, so that they can go online around the clock from any location. The research shows that four-in-ten are reluctant to put their smartphone down even during mealtimes. Furthermore, 23% of parents of 8-10 year olds admitted that their kids take their mobile phones to bed with...
Problem & Solution of India’s Next Unicorn
BLOGS

Problem & Solution of India’s Next Unicorn

Recent Global News Highlights Report: TutorGroup, a Shanghai-based online language learning provider, raised nearly $200M in Series C round, led by Singaporean sovereign fund, GIC and Goldman Sachs bringing its valuation to over $1B Varsity Tutors, an online platform connecting students with tutors for in-person and online sessions, raised $50M in Series B round led by Technology Crossover Ventures. Instructure, a cloud-based learning management system provider, went public on 13 Dec, 2015. Apple acquired Education Startup LearnSprout   Is EdTech today an increasingly attractive business for venture funding? According to Tracxn global EdTech report (Mar 2016), over $9.9B has been invested in the sector in the last 10 years with more than one third of the amount invested ...
With 23 Portfolio Companies across 6 Sectors, Unitus Touches 655,000+ Lives across 22 States of India
ANALYSIS

With 23 Portfolio Companies across 6 Sectors, Unitus Touches 655,000+ Lives across 22 States of India

25 February 2016, Bangalore: Unitus Seed Fund, India’s leading seed-stage impact investor, released its annual fund and portfolio impact report. Since 2013, the fund has made a total of 23 investments across sectors including Education, Healthcare, Financial Technology, Agriculture, Retail and Ecommerce, Mobile and Consumer. Their new impact report shows doubling of the total portfolio reach, touching more than 6.5 lac low-income lives across 22 states in India. According to the Global Impact Investing Network, the market for impact capital is currently $60B and is expected to reach $2 trillion over the next 10 years. In India, there has been a shift of mindset from pure not-for-profit enterprises to establishing sustainable and scalable market-based models to tackle low-income popul...