Edtech Startup Springboard Raises $9.5 Mn in Series A Funding  

San Francisco and Bengaluru-based online edtech startup Springboard has raised $9.5 Mn in Series A funding, led by Costanoa Ventures. Other investors who participated in the funding are Learn Capital, Jyoti Bansal, founder of AppDynamics and returning investors Blue Fog Capital, Rocketship.vc, and Moneta Ventures.

With the funding, Springboard aims to expand its offering into new verticals and geographies, improve its learning platform, expand career services and alumni support, and hire teams across product, marketing, engineering, and student services.

Mark Selcow, Venture Partner at Costanoa Ventures will now join Springboard’s board as a hands-on operating expert for scaling high-growth companies. Commenting on the funding Mark stated, “Springboard’s Career Tracks have experienced a tenfold increase in applications in just the last year. Their mentor-led, career-focused courses are exactly what today’s career-changers and job-seekers need. We believe Springboard’s unique offering will help fill the major gaps in the current job market and help people across the world achieve their career goals.”

Founded by Gautam Tambay and Parul Gupta in 2013, Springboard is a workforce upskilling edtech startup that offers online courses and extensive mentor-based learning for early and mid-level professionals in data science, UX design, digital marketing, and other new-economy fields.

Incubated by Microsoft, in 2015, the startup had raised $1.7 Mn in Seed funding from 11 investors including Inmobi founder Naveen Tewari, Blue Fog Capital and Noodle CEO John Katzman.

Springboard has educated more than 7,000 students in its intensive three-to-six month courses in data science, UX design, and business analytics, and has students and alumni in nearly 80 countries. The startup has more than 350 professional mentors from companies ranging from Amazon and Airbnb to Uber and McKinsey.

Springboard CEO and cofounder Gautam Tambay stated, “Millennials are likely to have 15 jobs with four to five career changes through their working lives. But options to make those life-changing shifts either involve taking on debt to go to graduate school or relying on a bare-bones online class with no support. Springboard allows the convenience of learning online, but with a robust project-based curriculum and human support, leading to better student outcomes.”

According to KPMG and Google’s market research, the online education in India is set to register 8x growth in the next five years. The market will hit $1.96 Bn by 2021. Besides Springboard, other edtech startups like BYJU, CareerGuide, Embibe, Cuemath and CultureAlley have been successful in grabbing the attention of investors in the edtech space in India.