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INVESTMENTS NEWS STARTUPSMalavika Velayanikal3:30 pm on Oct 7, 2015

An IPO, an acquisition, and now his thirdstartup has $3M to crack elearning

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Many a startup have found the highly regulated education

space in India a tough nut to crack. Despite the obvious

advantages of edtech, selling new ideas to schools and colleges

is time-consuming and frustrating.

“The sales cycle is too long in this space. Sometimes, it takes

six months to get a new client,” entrepreneur Chaitanya Chitta

told Tech in Asia in an earlier interview. Chaitanya co-founded

edtech startup Smarton, which shut down early this year

despite having a few big clients. “You are dependent on the

whims and fancies of the owners or the management of these

educational institutions,” he said.

Government regulations add another layer of complexity.

That’s why most edtech startups like Embibe and Toppr have

focused on exam prep, which is consumer-oriented and

independent from the education establishment.

Mumbai-based Schoolguru is an exception. It works with 12

universities across India to help them provide elearning to

their students. The universities can plug into the Schoolguru

platform, which saves them the hassles of setting up elearning

infrastructure, creating courses, and managing students

online. The platform has video lectures by 1,500 professors and

academics from all over India as well as abroad, which

universities can use to build courses in English and other

languages.

Today Schoolguru announced a series A funding round of INR

200 million (US$3 million) from individual investors in India

and the US. It plans to reach 25 to 30 universities in all the

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An IPO, an exit, and now his third startup bags $3M in funding https://www.techinasia.com/after-an-ipo-acquisition-third-startup-bags-3-million-to-crack-elearning/

1 of 3 03-11-2015 16:48

major states of India over the next couple of years. Universities

in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are also on its

radar.

Schoolguru CEO and co-founder Shantanu Rooj says:

We wish to revolutionize the distance

education scenario in India and abroad at

an affordable cost. We want to offer the

services of our platform not only to open

distance learning students but also to

students enrolling for traditional classroom

education. We would like bring a change in

the classroom education in several remote

areas of the country with technology

support.

A natural progression

An alumnus of IIT and IIM, Shantanu Rooj has had a long,

successful entrepreneurial journey stretching back 17 years,

when he founded his first startup with friends in Kolkata. This

documentation software company had an IPO in 2005, after

which he started Broadllyne. The second venture began as a

broadband internet service provider but quickly morphed into

a provider of IT services to institutions. The company had over

200 institutional clients when it was acquired in 2009.

So the launch of Schoolguru in 2012 as a provider of elearning

services to educational institutions was a natural progression

for Shantanu and his co-founders Ravi Rangan and Anil Bhat.

Before the launch of Schoolguru, all three worked together in

senior positions at egovernance service provider Glodyne,

whose clients included several educational institutions.

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An IPO, an exit, and now his third startup bags $3M in funding https://www.techinasia.com/after-an-ipo-acquisition-third-startup-bags-3-million-to-crack-elearning/

2 of 3 03-11-2015 16:48

Shantanu Rooj

One thing that stood out in the minds of these experienced

technopreneurs was the exclusion of large swathes of the

population due to lack of broadband in many areas. Schoolguru

therefore has a hybrid model, with its mobile platform

reaching students in rural areas who don’t have access to

computers or high-speed internet connections. They can study

for their degrees and diplomas on their smartphones.

Schoolguru currently covers 170 graduate and postgraduate

programs in nine languages; 150,000 students access the

platform. Schoolguru hopes to reach a million students as it

expands with its series A funding.

Editing by Nikita Peer and Erik Crouch; images by Soma Mukherjee

and Schoolguru

(And yes, we're serious about ethics and transparency. More

information here.)

An IPO, an exit, and now his third startup bags $3M in funding https://www.techinasia.com/after-an-ipo-acquisition-third-startup-bags-3-million-to-crack-elearning/

3 of 3 03-11-2015 16:48