India’s largest experience-sharing and mentorship network for students, Exprto has raised INR 5 Crore in its seed round led by GSF and Angel List USA.
The round also saw participation from Agility Ventures, LetsVenture, and Supermorpheus.
Founded in 2021 by Rajan Chaudhary and Varun Richharia, Exprto offers mentorship services that vary in duration between 1 to 12 months. Currently, the platform provides 1-on-1 as well as cohort-based group mentorship sessions. The company's vision is to make actionable guidance and mentorship accessible to every student in the world.
Exprto helps the young aspirants to connect with an IIT - JEE / NEET ranker directly on one-to-one call with whom they can relate in terms of background and challenges they are facing during their exam preparation. Many students face challenges in finding the right books and study material, maintaining the balance between board exams and competitive exam, knowing the right paper attempt strategy, choosing the right coaching institute, handling exam stress, etc. Such challenges are very common among the students, however it often makes the students feel demotivated and demoralized. It also helps students connect the dots between what they ought to do and the practical challenges which they face during the exam preparation journey to make sure that they perform to the best of their potential.
Talking about the platform, Co-founder of Exprto, Varun Richharia, said:
"The EdTech start-up is going after the big whitespace opportunity which is untapped in India. The total market opportunity for ‘Mentorship as a Service’ (MAAS) in India alone is $11 billion, with $6 billion in the test prep segment only. That’s where we will create coalescence and a massive success network within the Indian student community. The evolution of Exprto continues to build on the belief that every mentor’s voice can transform and accelerate people’s career immensely, and our platform provides them with an entirely new, accessible and engaging way to do so."
Exprto was born with a mission to democratize the information itself, making it free from all the biases and hidden marketing agendas. It also provides a unique opportunity to the young aspirants to interact one to one with the previous year toppers of their respective domain. This enables the aspirants to learn from others’ experience and work more effectively and efficiently towards their goal.
Commenting on the funding, Founder and CEO of GSF, Rajesh Sawhney, said:
"GSF is delighted to back Exprto, a fast-growing mentoring platform. Its unique business model of ‘MaaS - mentoring as a service’ is well-suited to meet the requirements of millions of aspirational students. Besides, Exprto’s founders, Varun and Rajan, are exceptional leaders and have a deep commitment committed to building a sustainable and innovative edtech platform.”
The startup currently has over 1,100 mentors from top Indian colleges on its platform, and plans to onboard over 10,000 new mentors in the coming months and also wants to expand into other major competitive exam segments in India.
Co-founder of Agility Ventures, Dhianu Das, added:
"Exprto distinguishes itself from other edtech companies by focusing solely on an underserved market: providing high-quality mentorship to students, which is required by four out of every five students in India."
Exprto claims that it has seen a staggering increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) of more than 23X, as well as over 18X growth in sessions of over 1 million+ minutes of mentorship. It now plans to refine the overall product and accelerate its growth by building a stronger team and technology with the newly-acquired funds. Product offerings will also be launched for the new market segments.
