Sequoia’s Surge-backed edtech startup Kyt raises $5m in series A round

Kyt, an edtech platform, has raised US$5 million in a series A round of funding led by Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), a venture fund managed by Falcon Edge Capital.

Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, January Capital, Titan Capital, and other angel investors also participated in the round.

(From left to right) Bhavik Rathod and Tripti Ahuja, founders of Kyt / Photo credit: Kyt

Founded in June last year, Kyt runs online-only extracurricular courses for children aged 5 to 15 years old by combining live classes with video-based revision materials in a full-stack model. Its platform offers courses across disciplines such as yoga, dance, music, and chess, among others, to students around the world.

As part of the investment from AWI, the company will expand its operations to Abu Dhabi and use the Emirate as its regional headquarters for targeting the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and other global markets. It will also build a team of data scientists, product managers, and engineers in the region.

It further said in a statement that the funds raised will be used for deeper investment in technology and products to enhance the overall experience of the students and accelerate global expansion.

Kyt has students in markets such as India, the UAE, and Singapore, and is looking to scale its footprint to the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

The edtech startup claims that a few thousand students have already taken a course or attended workshops with Kyt to date, with that number doubling each month. However, the company didn’t mention any specific numbers in terms of its monthly active or registered users.

It also claims that the platform has more than 20 teachers onboard, with plans to increase them to 500 over the next 12 months.

Last November, Kyt raised US$2.5 million from Sequoia Capital India’s Surge. It is part of Surge’s fourth cohort, an accelerator program that includes 16 other early-stage startups across Southeast Asia, India, and Australia.

With head offices in India and Singapore, Kyt was founded by the husband-wife duo Bhavik Rathod and Tripti Ahuja. Rathod was a founding leader for Uber India and the head of UberEats in India and South Asia while Tripti spent five years being part of the founding teams of early-stage startups in India, such as 400 Things and Exibit.

Prominent angel investors that have backed the startup include Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau, Cred founder Kunal Shah, and Citrus Pay founder Jitendra Gupta, among others.