Matrix Partners India has invested an undisclosed amount into Purple Squirrel Eduventures, a unique and innovative idea that connects students with industry partners for field visits, workshops and hands on practical experiences.
Founded in September 2013, by Aditya Gandhi and Sahiba Dhandhania, alumni of IIT Bombay and Christ University respectively, Purple Squirrel Eduventures (PSQ) is India’s largest online marketplace for supplementary education aiming to make practical and industry driven education accessible to all. The SINE, IIT Bombay incubated start up facilitates industry visits, workshops and hands on trainings for students from all streams.
Talking about the investment, Gourav Bhattacharya, VP at Matrix Partners, said, “We are very excited to partner with Aditya and Sahiba in their quest to create a large company. Purple Squirrel has a unique business model and targets a large, unexplored market. We remain extremely positive on education tech in India and will make multiple investments in the space.”
PSQ boasts of impressive numbers from its first year – 70 colleges from 10 cities, 8000 students and more than 300 partner companies to choose from. Anand Lunia from India Quotient, seed investors since Aug’14, believes this to be one of the most scalable and innovative business models in education, and said, “Purple Squirrel has solved the industry exposure problems by creating the right bite sized industry experiences. We love the way Sahiba and Aditya think of end to end experiences for students.”
The two founders, both first time entrepreneurs, are extremely optimistic about the sector. Upon reflecting the initial days, Sahiba said, “Both Aditya and I found an expectation reality mismatch in our first jobs. In wanting to help students chose better careers, we realised that we had to change the way they learnt in the first place.” “Our programs are fast gaining acceptance across major universities as an aid to classroom education to produce industry-ready graduates. This fund will majorly be used towards product and operation expansions”, adds Aditya.
The Purple Squirrel team today is more than a hundred people strong and continues to grow, headed by an extremely ambitious core team, say the founders.
