The shuttering of schools and colleges in an aim to contain the rampant spread of global pandemic COVID-19 has created an opportune time for online education startups to thrive. Against this backdrop, Gurugram-based edtech startup Camp K12 recently raised USD 4 million in seed round led by Matrix Partners and SAIF Partners.
The company provides live tutoring course for students in kindergarten to standard 12. The company would use the fund to expand its geographical reach and increase the team size.
Founded by Anshul Bhagi and Sandeep Bhagi, the company focuses on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Maths) subjects. It also has courses on coding and programming aimed at children from ages six to 18.
“Schools haven’t changed in 100 years. Kids today learn the same things that their parents learned a generation ago, and they learn in the same factory batch-processing sort of way,” Anshul Bhagi, co-founder at Camp K12, said in a statement.
The company has a presence in Singapore, UAE, and the USA. Apart from offering live classes through its online platform, Camp K12 also partners with schools to offer its courses. Local media Economic Times said Camp K12 has trained over 50,000 students and has partnered with hundreds of schools.
“At Camp K12 we’re re-imagining what school would look like if we could build from scratch today in 2020, for the next 100 years,” Bhagi said.
Mukul Arora, managing director at SAIF Partners in a statement said the online education market is going to grow exponentially. “Camp K12‘s custom-built virtual classroom environment for small-group learning, their pedagogy, and their curriculum reflects a passion for education, deep consumer understanding, and profound technical capability,” he said.
SAIF Partners has invested in two other edtech companies including Toppr and Unacademy. While Toppr offers online classes for students from grades five to 12 as well as provides preparatory courses for competitive exams, Unacademy focuses solely on the latter such as bank, railways, and engineering exams. Unacademy raised USD 110 million in February this year co-led by Facebook and General Atlantic.
Earlier this year, Matrix Partners led an undisclosed round of funding in Bengaluru-based edtech startup Toddle.