Gurugram. Feb 11, 2021: Instant tutor app Filo has raised $260K as part of its pre-seed investment round from Better Capital based on organic adoption by thousands of students purely driven by word of mouth.
With the mission to democratize access to the best teachers, Filo was founded by school friends Imbesat Ahmad and Shadman Anwer in Oct 2020.
At any time more than 10 million students study for school exams, college entrance or government job exams but at least half of them lose motivation due to lack of timely & reliable support for their queries. On Filo, they can access a tutor on-demand within just 60 seconds for a one-to-one video call.
In a short period of time, 35,000+ students have completed 1.5 million minutes of sessions on Filo – getting help for critical questions from high-quality tutors within minutes of experiencing the need. Filo is rapidly scaling its tutors to meet the constantly growing demand from students.
“True learning happens during self-study for most students and if they get stuck with a concept or a problem, it kills time, disrupts the day’s schedule, creates a backlog and leads to anxiety as the student falls behind her class. In such a situation, all that is needed is a small high-quality intervention from a teacher who can be reached on-demand to clarify the concept and the student is back on track. This problem affects 200 million+ students every year”, says Imbesat Ahmad, Co-founder & CEO of Filo.
The app’s simplicity and mindful approach are deeply influenced by Imbesat and Shadman’s own journey through education. Imbesat had his eyes set on IIT but to get there, he had to secure a seat in the highly coveted Super30, led at the time by DGP of Bihar Police, Mr Abhayanand. This timely intervention helped him secure admission to IIT Kharagpur, the significance of which has inspired his journey through the country to arrive at a solution like FILO.
“On our platform, students can learn – what they want to learn, when they want, how to want and from whom they want. We are not bulldozing them with a new set of thousands of GB of data of text or video materials but giving them space to just overcome their hurdles at the earliest possible”, says Shadman Anwer, Co-founder & CTO of Filo.
In spite of the new crop of education-focused companies, millions of students in India and Bharat suffer from a lack of affordable support for their education. This has been the central idea for the founders of Filo, an app that gives students instant access to a high-quality tutor who speaks in their mother tongue.
Students all over India have been at a huge disadvantage with schools and coaching classes being shut due to the Covid19 pandemic. For the upcoming JEE and NEET examinations, Filo aims to help students overcome this challenge by reaching qualified tutors on-demand to get help for their self-study.
“Filo is one of the most impactful education apps that democratizes affordable access to a good teacher for everyone from urban well-to-do students to poor students in remote parts of India – the fact that it was the missing piece in India’s education puzzle is evident from the massive adoption it has seen purely based on word-of-mouth. We are excited to partner with Imbesat & Shadman”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early investor in multiple innovative edtech companies including Skill Lync, Teachmint, Virohan, Stoa School & others.
