Pariksha, a Pune-based EdTech startup that helps students prepare for government job exams, has raised $2 million in Pre-Series A funding round led by Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund.
The latest round was joined by LetsVenture Plus, 9Unicorns, and Innercircle. The company’s existing investors, including INSEAD Angels and Venture Catalysts, also participated in the round.
Founded by Karanvir Singh, Utkarsh Bagri, Vikram Shekhawat, and Deepak Choudhary in 2015, Pariksha helps students prepare various government job exams in the language of their choice through its analytics driven, gamification modelled, adaptive testing, and mastery learning-based platform. It offers a subscription-based vernacular test preparation mobile application where aspirants can pay, learn and prepare for various government job examinations anywhere, anytime.
Pariksha aims to change the way students prepare competitive exams and succeed with the help of cutting-edge technology. The company has its operations across 11 states, serving over 3 million users with over 100,000 paid subscribers.
Speaking about the company and how the latest funding will help it, Karanvir Singh, Co-founder and CEO of Pariksha, said,
“With vernacular content on top of ever-evolving technology, Pariksha is poised to fuel the hunger for the success of crores of underserved aspirants. This round will help us shift up the gear, make the product more inclusive and expand our reach with focus on using system intelligence. We are attracting huge interest from both domestic and foreign funds, including global financial institutions, and are in discussion with them to raise the next $10 million in Series A round of investment.”
Pariksha has also launched a physical prepaid subscription card, known as Safalta, to enable offline transaction in the rural cash economy for candidates who are not comfortable making online transactions available at retail outlets across the state.
Commenting on the investment, Sanjay Jain, Partner at Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, said,
“Online training and testing is a great equalizer. By providing access to the best training materials in local languages to a previously under-served segment, Pariksha is ensuring that they are able to compete effectively for jobs.”
Pariksha had last raised an undisclosed amount of funding from INSEAD Angels and others in April 2020. Prior to that, the Pune-headquartered company had raised Rs 4 crore in a round led by Venture Catalysts in July 2019.
