Genius Teacher, a quiz-based e-learning platform focusing on the K-12 category, has raised $2 million in an angel funding round from a clutch of individual and institutional investors.
Participants in the round include Abhijit Bose (WhatsApp CEO, India), Kunal Shah (CEO, Cred), Sandeep Tandon (Co-founder, Freecharge), Dhruv Agarwal (CEO, PropTiger), Justin Sway (CEO, MMOne Online), Dan Lapus (Co-founder, Cvent), Nimish Kampani (President, Let’s Venture), Gaurav Gupta (Former Vice President, Snapdeal), Bikram Bedi (Former Managing Director, AWS India), and Farooq Adam (Co-founder, Fynd).
Two institutional investors – Whiteboard Capital and VKG Ventures LLP – also participated in the round, according to a press statement.
Founded in 2016 by Housing.com founder Advitiya Sharma, Genius Teacher provides a quiz-based learning platform for K-12 students to learn Math, Science, and English. It offers personalized and interest-based learning content and provides curriculum-specific and adaptive learning capabilities through its AI-enabled platform. The startup also provides scholarships and internships with companies such as WhatsApp, Mahindra & Mahindra, Singapore University, and Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) among others.
Genius Teacher aims to transform education into a learning adventure. It currently offers 50,000+ interest-based quizzes, 10,000+ interest-based concept learning videos, and 20,000+ doubt solution videos for the most comprehensive competitive exam preparation.
Speaking about the company and its plans to use the funding, Advitiya Sharma, Founder and CEO, Genius Teacher, said in a statement,
“Genius Teacher is all about transforming boring education to a learning adventure. We have a big vision to be the best quiz-based learning platform loved by millions of children in the K-12. We will utilize our $2 million funds raised to create products for teachers and grow fast to million-plus students in the next 12 months.”
Operated by Genius Learning Labs Pvt Ltd., Genius Teacher claims it has signed up more than 100 schools, 2,000 teachers and over 70,000 students on its platform. According to Sharma, the platform plans to expand the service to about 500,000 paid subscribers in next 9-12 months.
Lauding the company, Abhijit Bose, WhatsApp’s India CEO, said,
“Learning content has failed to spark children’s curiosity; the average time spent on even the most popular educational app in India today is only 71 minutes. On the contrary, Genius Teacher clocks an average of 180 minutes.”
Anuj Khetan, Director, VKG Ventures LLP, also commented saying,
“Genius Learning app has used AI and ML to deliver tailor-made educational content based on each student’s individual interest, personalizing it on demand along with gamifying it to increase engagement levels. This entire proposition and the team behind it has made Genius a very unique player in the space of edtech.”
According to Sharma, the Mumbai-based startup is already getting a lot of inbound interest from investment funds and is looking to raise further funding of about $5-8 million in venture capital funding in the next 12 months.
