Edtech Startup Toddle Gets Seed Funding From Matrix Partners, Others

Bengaluru-based edtech startup Toddle has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round led by Matrix Partners India. The round also witnessed participation from seed-stage fund Better Capital and angel investors such as Swiggy cofounder Rahul Jaimini among others.

The company in a press statement said that it will be utilising the funds to cater to more educational segments in the coming years.

Toddle was founded by Misbah Jafary, Gautam Arora, Deepanshu Arora, Nikhil Poonawala and Parita Parekh. It works in collaboration with IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) to offer a unified platform for teachers to collaborate and plan, encourage student agency, personalise learning and engage with parents, track analytics and more.

Schools and educators can also learn from each other’s classes by capturing teaching and learning sessions through photos, videos, audio-notes and more.

Currently, the company caters to more than 10K teachers on its platform through its Reggio Inspired Preschools, K-12 World School and others. “Our goal is to simplify the entire teaching and learning cycle with one seamless and intuitive solution to today’s tech-savvy teachers,” said Arora.

Toddle supports a library of 200+ learning standards used around the world including PYP Scope and Sequence, Common Core, US State Standards, Australian Curriculum, New Zealand Curriculum and others. For parents and students, Toddle offers individual student progress and while teachers can track class progress across PYP elements and curriculum goals, set in collaboration with other educators.

According to KPMG and Google report, the edtech market is expected to reach $2 Bn by 2021. The growth is said to be fueled by technology-driven online tutoring, edutainment, online test preparation, gamification of education content, web-based e-learning platforms and others. In fact, with more than 1.5 Mn schools and 260 Mn enrolments each year, India has the world’s largest K-12 education system, both primary and secondary.

The market opportunity is huge, and a lot of startups are emerging in the edtech landscape. Some of the popular startups include Byju’s, Simplilearn, Toppr, UpGrad, Khan Academy among others. In 2018, there were 3,500 edtech startups in India. Between 2014 and 2019, a total of $1.8 Bn was raised by edtech startups across 303 investment deals, as per DataLabs by Inc42.

This year, Bengaluru-based edtech unicorn startup Byju’s raised $200 Mn in funding from New York-based Tiger Global. In the same year, another edtech startup Harappa Education raised an undisclosed amount of funding from James Murdoch-led Lupa Systems.

In December 2019, Mumbai-based edtech startup Eduisfun secured funds worth $28 Mn from angel investors such as actor Amitabh Bachchan, Ogilvy Group chief creative officer Piyush Pandey and PwC partner – assurance Russel Parera.

Mumbai-based higher education company Shahani Group’s Smart institute also raised $1.5 Mn in Series A round led by Ah! Ventures.