Edtech Startup Toppr Tops Up With INR 14.9 Cr From Kaizen

Mumbai-based edtech startup Toppr has secured additional funding from its existing investor Kaizen.

According to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings accessed by Inc42, the company in a board meeting on June 4 approved to issue and offer 23,779 Series C2 preference shares at face value of INR 5 with a premium of INR 6,303.07 per share worth INR 14.99 Cr to Kaizen Private Equity. The money came in the bank on June 11.

The company said that the investment will be used for further expansion and growth. With this, Kaizen holds 7.07% stake in the company, making it the fourth-largest investor after SAIF Partners, Eight Roads Ventures and Helion Ventures with 16.57%, 15.92% and 15.68% stake respectively. 

Prior to this, Toppr has raised $65.1 Mn in funding.

Founded in 2013 by Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti, Toppr started with courses for Class 11 and 12. It now offers adaptive learning for Class 5 to 12 and also competitive exams like JEE. In February 2016, Toppr also acquired edtech startup Manch. The company is pursuing aggressive expansion plans, to reach out to students across the country.

According to SimilarWeb, based on a study of 35 top online learning platforms, the edtech segment saw a 26% increase in user visits between April 2019 to March 2020, as compared to April 2018 – March 2019. Further, in the first 28 days of lockdown, the edtech segment saw 128.8 Mn visits (on average, 4.6Mn daily visits) as compared to 102.2 Mn average visits between April 2019 – February 2020. 

Toppr claimed to have a 100% growth in paid users month on month and 50% growth in traffic even after most of the school exams are over during Covid-19. 

According to DataLabs By Inc42, Indian online learning market is expected to be worth $1.96 Bn by 2021. According to the report, before Covid-19 lockdown, seven out of 10 top edtech players were focussed on school-level online learning. Vedantu, LearnCBSE, BYJU’S, Toppr, Tiwari Academy, Meritnation and Gradeup collectively captured 51.25% of the traffic share. 

However, in the 28 days post-lockdown, the traffic share shifted towards MOOC platforms like Udemy (17.81%) and Coursera (10.10%) and Toppr (8.81%).

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