University Admissions & Career Guidance platform Leverage Ed-tech Private Limited, announced today that it raised over $1.5Mn from its existing investors. DSG Consumer Partners & Blume Ventures have co-led the latest funding round.
Saama Capital founder Ash Lilani & PayU CEO Amrish Rau also participated in this round.
Founded by Akshay Chaturvedi in January 2017, Leverage Ed-tech operates education platforms LeverageEdu.com and Univalley.com. The Company aims to be the go-to brand for university admissions and career guidance for the millennials.
Leverage Edu provides students enrolled on its platform with a seamless college application journey which includes personalised mentor-led 1:1 workshops, portfolio build-up sessions, access to pre-program internships & online courses, and exclusive scholarship options. The company also helps students with post-admit services through their partners for education loans, accommodation options and much more. In September 2019, the company has also launched a new business vertical Univalley.com, which provides advisory, tech and recruitment solutions to partner universities across the globe.
About a million students visit the LeverageEdu.com platform every month to learn more about higher education options & careers they are interested in. The platform also has an AI tool that helps students predict what options are best suited for their profile, and the company continues to focus on making its free tools grow faster and have wider access.
This financing round takes the company’s total capital raised to over $3Mn. Presently in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, the company will also expand their presence to more tier 2 and 3 cities in the next few quarters.
Founder & CEO of the three-year old company, Akshay Chaturvedi, said, “We have been massively obsessed with student experience on the LeverageEdu.com platform and clear well-defined student success outcomes – which has led to an exceptional revenue growth in the last 9 months, as well as early signs of building a trusted brand. Focusing on few core areas and executing them really well has helped. Fortunate to have phenomenal investors who understand what it takes to build a company in this space, and who’ve been extremely helpful while scaling up. I am absolutely thrilled that they have decided to back down on us. Excited to continue to execute and build a leading global full stack company in this space – one happy, relaxed, confident student journey at a time!”
Deepak Shahdadpuri, Managing Director of DSG Consumer Partners, said, “DSGCP first invested in LeverageEdu and partnered with Akshay a year ago. In that short period Akshay & his team have demonstrated very strong execution capabilities and have positioned LeverageEdu as a leading emergent higher education & career advisory brand. A large part of their success to date is the unrelenting focus on making the student the core of everything that company does. We are very excited about the next phase of growth as LeverageEdu expands into becoming a full stack service provider and expands operations to more Indian cities.”
Karthik Reddy, Managing Partner at Blume Ventures, said, “Akshay and team have put in place strong frameworks for building a large long-term company, in this first year of our partnership. The scale of the overseas education opportunity set is even more massive than we initially imagined and the pace at which the team has executed has meant that we are happy to see ourselves co-leading a second round with DSG into an early breakout from fund III.”
About Leverage Edu
Leverage Edu initially began as a higher education mentorship marketplace in Silicon Valley’s Draper University’s 2015 cohort by Akshay Chaturvedi, and formally launched as a company later in January 2017. The company is now a full stack university admissions player, using AI to help students work with best-matched mentors from around the world in personalised career workshops. Leverage Edu has demonstrated industry-leading student outcomes in the last three years, and now also helps students with value added services like education loan, accommodation options, on-campus/ long-term mentoring, and more. It’s recently launched vertical Univalley.com partners with select universities across vetted courses and programs, to help students with an end-to-end curated discovery-to-dorm room journey across select regions globally.
About DSG Consumer Partners
DSG Consumer Partners (DSGCP) is an early stage venture capital fund focused on investing exclusively in consumer brands and businesses in India and South East Asia. Since its inception in 2013, DSGCP has backed over 45 start-ups and helped build some of the leading insurgent brands including OYO Rooms (sold to Softbank), Zipdial (sold to Twitter), Redmart (sold to Lazada), Veeba, Epigamia Greek Yogurt, Raw Pressery, Chai Point, Eazydiner, SaladStop!, Chope, GOQii, Mswipe, Arata, The Moms Co, Sleepy Owl Coffee, Simplee Aloe, Piccolo, Pip & Nut, YouVit, Brewlander and Goa Brewing Co. DSGCP is investing from its third fund, currently manages US$200 million of committed capital and has investment professionals and advisors in Mauritius, Singapore and Mumbai.
About Blume Ventures
Blume Ventures is a leading India focused seed-stage venture fund that backs startups with funding as well as active mentoring and support. Blume has been one of the most active pre Series A VCs, funding more than 60 companies since its inception in 2011. Its portfolio consists of more than 100 high-potential founders, and it counts amongst its notable exits TaxiForSure, TFS (to Ola), Zipdial (Twitter’s first India acquisition), Promptec Renewables (acquired by Havell’s), Framebench and 1Click (both acquired by Freshdesk). Blume’s portfolio includes emerging stars like Ola, Grey Orange, Zopper, Mobstac, Carbon Clean Solutions, Roadrunnr, Belong, Mettl, Nowfloats, Instamojo, Chillr and many more.
