ByteLearn Raises $9.5 Mn; Comes Out Of Stealth Mode

SUMMARY

The startup plans to use the funds for product development, global expansion, enhancing technological capabilities and ramp up its team in the US as well as India

ByteLearn is an AI-powered teaching assistant that guides, tutors and grades students helping teachers save 40% of their time, but only for the subject math

Founded by ex-InstaSolv founders Aditya Singhal and Nishant Sinha, the startup aims to reinvent the way math is taught by teachers and learned by students

AI-based teaching assistant startup ByteLearn has raised $9.5 Mn in its seed round and came out of its stealth mode. The platform is now open for early access, as per the startup’s website.

In February 2021, edtech startup Vedantu had acquired the doubt-solving platform InstaSolv to boost its test prep and K-12 tutoring verticals. Two of InstaSolv founders Aditya Singhal and Nishant Sinha took an exit and went on to build a new venture — ByteLearn.

The startup plans to use the funds for product development, global expansion and enhancing technological capabilities. The startup also plans to ramp up its team in the US as well as India.

Led by 9Unicorns, Chiratae Ventures and Leo Capital, the round also saw participation from Venture Catalysts, Goodwater Capital, Earlsfield Capital, Kettleborough VC, PitchRight Ventures, AdvantEdge VC. Several investors such as Growthstory’ Srini Rai, F9’s Anand Chandrasekaran, Arun Tadanki, Jio’s Vikas Choudhury, BrightChamps’ Ravi Bhushan, among others also participated in ByteLearn’s seed round.

Founded in June 2021 by Singhal and Sinha, the founding team of BytelLearn includes AI/ML experts such as Ankur Narang, PhD, Hari Sankar, PhD. Their design, product and curriculum team in the Silicon Valley includes US-based edtech expert ex-Khan Academy executive Kitt Hirasaki and Teach For America-alum Charuta Joshi.

ByteLearn is an AI-powered teaching assistant startup that guides tutors and grades students independent of a physical teacher. For a teacher, ByteLearn claims to be saving 40% of their time, by assisting them in creating tests, quizzes, and homework on its platform. Currently, the startup only caters to mathematical concepts.

According to Sinha, ByteLearn is reinventing the way math is taught by the teachers and learned by students. With solutions that are fun, interactive, and customised as per students’ level of understanding, the step-by-step AI tutor’s approach aims to transform the way teachers teach and kids learn math.

Additionally, the concept-based learning model also builds a knowledge graph of students’ skills and analyses the gaps to assign grade or difficulty levels. ByteLearn also provides actionable insights for the teachers to leverage and improve student results.

As per Inc42 Plus analysis, in 2021, the edtech startups have raised about $5.2 Bn in funding, compared to $1.4 Bn raised last year. Since the onset of the pandemic, four edtech startups have entered the unicorn club. Last September, Unacademy was the second edtech startup to cross the billion-dollar valuation, followed by Eruditus, upGrad, and Vedantu.

Thanks to an increase in customers in the backdrop of schools and other educational institutions being shut for most of 2020 and the present on-and-off mode persistent in educational institutes in the current year too, the edtech sector is surely seeing more greenshoots with emerging startups such as Classplus, Teachmint and Quizziz, among others.