Skip to main content

India’s Vedantu raises $42M to expand its live and interactive online tutoring platform

Vedantu, an India-based startup that operates an online tutoring service, today announced it has raised $42 million as it races to expand its reach in the nation where tens of millions of students enter formal education and prepare for under-graduate level competitive exams each year.

The Series C financing round for the five-year old startup was led by Tiger Global and WestBridge Capital, with existing investors Accel, Omidyar India and TAL Education and Vedantu co-founders also participating in it. The startup has raised $58 million to date.

Vedantu offers a mix of recorded and live and interactive courses. Students who have enrolled for the interactive sessions are required to answer questions every few minutes by tapping on their smartphone screen. They can also raise their doubts at the end of the session.

The startup, which serves students aged between 12 to 18 (serving students in grade 6 to 12), offers a large catalog of recorded sessions at no charge to users. It generates revenue from selling subscription to live and interactive sessions, Vamsi Krishna, co-founder and CEO of the startup, told TechCrunch in an interview.

vlcsnap 2019 08 29 16h15m14s925

These subscriptions can vary from Rs 100 ($1.4), for students looking for sessions around a particular topic, to Rs 50,000 ($700) for long-term courses that focus on training students for under-graduate level courses, Krishna explained.

More than 1.5 million students watch educational videos on Vedantu each month, of which 30,000 are paying subscribers. The platform has amassed users from more than 30 nations, mostly those of Indian diaspora.

As part of the offering, Vedantu also tracks how much time a student takes in answering questions to determine the topics that they might be struggling to grasp. It then challenges those students to solve more problems from those topics and alerts the teachers and their assistants to follow up, Krishna said.

Additionally, teachers take frequent breaks to check with students if they understood the topic. If a substantial number of students say they have doubts, teachers share more examples to explain the subject.

Students also get to interact with teachers throughout the session through chat and their microphones. Krishna said these offerings are necessary to better coach students. It also differentiates Vedantu from other edtech startups in India.

Before starting Vedantu, Krishna, who is a teacher himself, ran Lakshya Institute that helped students prepare for under-graduate level courses until early 2014, before selling majority stake to Mumbai-based K-12 tutoring and test preparation firm MT Educare.

He said he will use the fresh capital to broaden the startup’s engineering team and product offerings, and find more users. Because Vedantu does not rely on previously recorded footage, scaling it prove challenging.

But the startup is not looking to aggressively expand its courses and its current live format can allocate more students in a session, Krishna said.

From Right to Left Vamsi Krishna CEO Co founder Anand Prakash Co founder Pulkit Jain Co Founder and Head Product

From left to right: Vamsi Krishna, CEO and co-founder, Anand Prakash, co-founder, with Pulkit Jain, co-founder and head of product.

Vedantu competes with a number of local players including unicorn Byju’s, which is widely believed to be the largest edtech startup in the world with its valuation nearing $6 billion. Byju’s, which has more than 2.4 million paid subscribers (and over 30 million users), offers courses for students in kindergarten to year 12, in addition to those preparing for competitive under graduation level courses.

Unacademy, another edtech startup in India, focuses on the same space and recently raised a $50 million round.

India has the largest population in the world in the age bracket of 5 to 24 years. The education space in the nation is estimated to grow to $35 billion in the next six years.



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2PweB9g
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Apple’s AI Push: Everything We Know About Apple Intelligence So Far

Apple’s WWDC 2025 confirmed what many suspected: Apple is finally making a serious leap into artificial intelligence. Dubbed “Apple Intelligence,” the suite of AI-powered tools, enhancements, and integrations marks the company’s biggest software evolution in a decade. But unlike competitors racing to plug AI into everything, Apple is taking a slower, more deliberate approach — one rooted in privacy, on-device processing, and ecosystem synergy. If you’re wondering what Apple Intelligence actually is, how it works, and what it means for your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you’re in the right place. This article breaks it all down.   What Is Apple Intelligence? Let’s get the terminology clear first. Apple Intelligence isn’t a product — it’s a platform. It’s not just a chatbot. It’s a system-wide integration of generative AI, machine learning, and personal context awareness, embedded across Apple’s OS platforms. Think of it as a foundational AI layer stitched into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and m...

The Silent Revolution of On-Device AI: Why the Cloud Is No Longer King

Introduction For years, artificial intelligence has meant one thing: the cloud. Whether you’re asking ChatGPT a question, editing a photo with AI tools, or getting recommendations on Netflix — those decisions happen on distant servers, not your device. But that’s changing. Thanks to major advances in silicon, model compression, and memory architecture, AI is quietly migrating from giant data centres to the palm of your hand. Your phone, your laptop, your smartwatch — all are becoming AI engines in their own right. It’s a shift that redefines not just how AI works, but who controls it, how private it is, and what it can do for you. This article explores the rise of on-device AI — how it works, why it matters, and why the cloud’s days as the centre of the AI universe might be numbered. What Is On-Device AI? On-device AI refers to machine learning models that run locally on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or edge device — without needing constant access to the cloud. In practi...

Max Q: Psyche(d)

In this issue: SpaceX launches NASA asteroid mission, news from Relativity Space and more. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/h6Kjrde via IFTTT