10 top-funded edtech startups bucking the trend in India this year (INFOGRAPHIC)

Photo credit: Premnath Thirumalaisamy

Edtech is a hard nut to crack in India, despite its huge potential to make an impact in a country with 1.25 billion people waking up to a new era of economic empowerment.

Indian education is highly regulated by government, and traditional institutions are mostly resistant to new ideas. Even for consumer-facing edtech, sales cycles are typically much longer than in sectors like ecommerce. This discourages venture capital investors because the longer it takes to validate a business model, the riskier it gets.

Data from venture capital analytics firm Tracxn shows that edtech has received less than one percent of the venture capital flow into India this year. The share of Indian startups in the global edtech funding pie is less than two percent. We analyzed the reasons for the sad state of affairs in the first part of this article yesterday.

But flowers bloom even in the desert. And so it is in the arid Indian edtech scene where a few hardy startups are defying the odds. Who are these gritty entrepreneurs making the grade in this stern test? We look at 10 of the top-funded edtech startups in India this year, according to data from Tracxn, to see which are the ones hitting the growth path.

Simplilearn – US$15 million

Six-year-old Simplilearn is designed for IT professionals looking to upgrade their skills and get certified to advance their careers. About 60 percent of its users are in the US where online learning finds more takers. But India is catching up as mobile and internet coverage expands. Unlike academic portals like Coursera, Simplilearn has a sharper focus on career goals in the 300 plus courses it offers.

“We’ve also made substantial progress in growing our enterprise business,” Simplilearn COO Gerald Jaideep told Tech in Asia recently. Top customers include ​HP Bulgaria, Vodacom in Africa, Avaya, Pepsi in North America, Wipro India, TCS Europe, and the Emaar Group from Saudi Arabia.

Simplilearn raised US$15 million in series C funding led by Mayfield in April. Two months later, it acquired Silicon Valley-based digital marketing training company Market Motive for US$10 million to expand its portfolio of courses to include topics in great demand. Simplilearn had earlier raised US$13 million in two rounds from Kalaari Capital and Helion Venture Partners.

UpGrad – US$15 million

Media magnate Ronnie Screwvala, who sold his stake in UTV to Disney for around US$300 million, launched this edtech venture in July 2015. Like Simplilearn, it targets working professionals looking to upgrade themselves. But it has more broad-based courses like entrepreneurship and digital business management. Screwvala’s partner in this is Mayank Kumar, who was vice-president of Bertelsmann India Investments. Two other co-founders are IIT Delhi grads Ravijot Chugh and Prabhav Phalgun. UpGrad has US$15 million in initial committed investment.

Toppr – US$10 million

As the name suggests, Toppr aims to help students in India crack college entrance exams with unlimited practice tests, feedback reports, and benchmarking. Co-founders Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti are both IIT Bombay grads who founded a mobile commerce marketplace called Chaupaati Bazaar back in 2008, which got acquired by retail conglomerate Future Group. Zishaan later became a prolific angel investor, being among the earliest to bet on Ola.

Toppr, launched in 2013, had a series B funding round of US$10 million in May this year led by Fidelity Growth Partners India. SAIF Partners and Helion Ventures, who invested US$2 million in Toppr in 2014, participated in the follow-up funding.

CultureAlley – US$6.15 million

“We actually started CultureAlley as a platform for people to learn foreign languages like Spanish, Mandarin, Portuguese, and so on. But while we were doing that, we realized that English was a much, much larger market,” CultureAlley co-founder Pranshu Bhandari tells Tech in Asia in a recent interview.

Vedantu – US$5 million

MeritNation – US$4 million

Schoolguru – US$3 million

Plancess EduSolutions – US$2 million

EduKart – US$1 million

MeetUniv – US$1 million

And the one that came in at the eleventh hour…