India’s education system lacks a practical approach. This startup wants to change that with VC funding

India’s education system severely lacks practical learning. It’s not surprising to see graduates fresh out of the premier institutes needing mug up lessons because they’re baffled by the implementation of the theory.

When Sahiba Dhandhania and Aditya Gandhi were working in a finance firm, they found a severe mismatch between their skills and the job at hand.

They quickly turned this problem into an opportunity and launched Purple Squirrel. Today the startup team revealed they’ve raised an undisclosed amount in pre-series A funding from Matrix Partners. Prior to this, the duo had also raised an angel round from India Quotient.

The firm is a supplementary education provider which conducts practical and industry-driven educational initiatives such as facilitating industry visits, workshops, and hands-on training sessions for students across engineering, arts, sciences, and commerce.

Relearning learning

“We found an expectation-reality mismatch in our first jobs. In wanting to help students choose better careers, we had to change the way students learned in the first place,” said Sahiba Dhandhania, co-founder of Purple Squirrel.

To date, the startup claims to have conducted over 8,000 such training sessions across 300 Indian companies. The funding will be used for further expansion.

Education tech companies are an emerging segment in India with many of them on the road to pick [up] big bucks from major VC firms. Among these, Pagalguy, an ed-tech firm serving engineering and management students is reportedly in talks to raise US$15 million from investors.

Matrix Partners’ vice president Gourav Bhattacharya revealed today that they remain extremely positive on education tech in India and will make multiple investments in the space.

The Matrix Partners fund has INR 30,000,000,000 (US$481 million) under its belt. It typically invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer market at seed, and early growth stages. Its portfolio companies include food ordering app TinyOwl, mobile point-of-sales firm Mswipe, on-demand cab service Ola, and online classifieds site Quikr.