Indian edtech startup for government exams Habitat raises $679k in seed round

Habitat, an education tech platform for civil service aspirants in India, said it has raised 50 million rupees (US$679,000) in a seed funding round from Unitus Ventures and Whiteboard Capital.

Photo credit: Patibutkan Singsoot

The startup serves the information-heavy government examination sector, which includes the Union Public Service Commission and the Reserve Bank of India. Habitat uses machine learning and natural language processing for interactive learning.

With the new funds, the company plans to develop its technology and strengthen its team. Habitat is also looking to introduce new languages to its platform, which currently features Hindi and English.

Launched in 2016, Habitat offers a personalized and mentor-assisted educational approach through interactive chats and claims to help students get better scores on exams.

The edtech platform is also targeting India’s competitive exam segments like the Joint Entrance Examination and Pre-Medical Test, among others.

See also: Edtech firm Byju’s keeps India focus as revenue growth triples

“The future of learning is co-creation,” said Habitat CEO Rohit Pande. “Habitat puts forth a communication-first pedagogy and centralizes all learning activities like discussions, clearing doubts, study-plan iterations, on-demand lectures, notes sharing and assessments.”

Habitat says it has more than 10,000 subscribers on its platform and over 200,000 conversations with select mentors. It also allows users to participate in live discussions with their peers on its platform.

Nearly 60% of Habitat’s registered users are from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India.

According a report from RedSeer and Omidyar Network India, the country’s edtech market is expected reach US$3.5 billion by 2022.

Other players in the space include Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu, Eruditus, and UpGrad. Byju’s is also close to raising US$200 million in a fresh funding round from US investment firms BlackRock and T. Rowe Price at a valuation of $12 billion, reported Livemint.

Meanwhile, Unacademy recently raised an undisclosed amount of money from Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group. It also joined the unicorn club in September, following a US$150 million fundraise led by SoftBank.