LabInApp, Math Adventures crack edtech competition, get chance to pitch for Unitus seed funding

Unitus Seed Fund, based in Bangalore and Seattle, is holding a series of competitions for Indian edtech startups, in partnership with Sylvant Advisors, an accelerator in Bangalore. Two winners from each competition get a chance to pitch for seed funding of INR 10 million (US$160,000) from Unitus.

LabInApp and Math Adventures are the winners of the first competition, which was an online pitchfest with viewers in the US and India.

“India has a US$100 billion for-profit education market. A huge number of firms have launched in the past 10 years, yet the quality and longevity of their products or services is far from uniform. We believe that upcoming “edupreneurs” need expert mentoring, incubation services, seed investments, and a dynamic networking community,” says Will Poole, managing partner of Unitus Seed Fund, which recently got investment from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

LabInApp, the winner of the competition, is a lab in an app. It’s a real-time 3D virtual laboratory to help students and teachers perform or demonstrate science experiments online.

The runner-up, Math Adventures is an activity-based learning platform for mathematics. Concepts are applied to real life problems to put into practice Benjamin Franklin’s precept: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

Over 100 edtech startups entered the first competition. The next one is slated for later this month and the final competition will be in September. The top startup from each competition gets a cash prize of INR 500,000 (US$8,000). Apart from that, it also gets an invite to the Unitus office in Bangalore to make a formal pitch for seed funding.

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