XOOG, a Safe Social platform with skill clubs for students to showcase their learnings and achievements to the community and earn rewards, announced that it has raised $150,000 in a pre-seed round with a series of institutional and individual investors investing in the startup.
Seetharaman Thiruvenkatam, Kavitha Seetharaman, Prasad Prabhakaran, and Prashanth Prabhakaran were among the key investors in this round. Existing investor Marwari Catalysts, India’s fastest growing startup accelerator, also contributed to the raise.
The Bangalore-based startup plans to utilize the funds to improve the value proposition by enhancing the ecosystem for talent showcasing and enrichment, to onboard more users using performance marketing and growth hack, expand their product engineering team and to accelerate its product-led growth in order to expand its footprint in India as well as globally.
Founded by Karishma Seetharaman and Ritvik Raj Prasannakumar in 2020, XOOG is a Decentralized Social/Community based platform for students to build their future profile with their acquired skills and build a career out of it. The platform enables students to be a part of various skill clubs like Rubik’s, Art, Music and more, showcase their skills, achievements on a safe feed, get rated by their peers, participate in challenges & competitions and earn real life rewards and scholarships.
XOOG aims to empower the child to choose their skill and improve it, and help parents understand their child’s skills better and to help them make better choices.
Talking about the company, Co-founder & CTO of XOOG, Karishma Seetharaman, said:
“We have always wanted to do something in the field of education because it is one area where we can make a huge impact in a lot of lives. On today’s date it is painful to see students labelled as failures at the age of 10-12 based on their academic performances but we wanted to make a difference by letting students shine at what they were born for.”
Seetharaman further added:
“To make this vision a reality, with XOOG we help students showcase their skills, their daily learnings, achievements and progress to the world, get rated by their peers, enhance their future and earn scholarships and rewards in return. We are hereby delighted to receive this tremendous support from the strategic investors who have not only provided us with their financial support but also understand our business model deeply to support our vision of making talented individuals of tomorrow by giving them the right opportunities today.” Accelerated by Marwari Catalysts, XOOG was selected out of 500 startups in the accelerator’s cohort program, ‘Thrive’.
The EduSocio tech startup gives students the practical, real-life experience needed to gain confidence to pursue their interests and succeed in the longer run.
Commenting on the latest development, Co-founder & CEO of XOOG, Ritvik Raj Prasannakumar, said:
“As a country, we are blessed with abundant talent and with a structured approach, anyone could build their future around it! Our students keep winning science competitions, spell bees on the international stage but they are extremely good at painting, singing, dancing and other areas too. One of the problems with Indian education is that we only focus on marks and exams. This leaves very little scope for students to realize their potential in other areas. For too long, a student’s IQ (intelligence quotient) has been linked to his/her math and verbal skills, which is a skewed and narrow parameter to judge. But with XOOG, we are providing a platform for students to showcase their talent and also enable parents to make better decisions for their children’s education and skills.”
Seetharaman Thiruvenkatam, MD of Shri Hari Venkateshwara Paper Mills, added:
“A range of viable career options are coming up in India, beyond the traditional vocations of engineering and medicine. And with the opening of new frontiers in the Indian Education sector that has paved the way for a comprehensive vision on education, XOOG is perfectly positioned in providing a platform for talented students to showcase their skills and as a result giving a new definition to the education system of India.”
