Edtech Startup Uolo Raises $22.5 Mn Funding From Winter Capital, Others

Edtech startup Uolo has secured $22.5 Mn in Series A funding round led by UAE-based VC fund Winter Capital. 

Existing investor Blume Ventures and Dubai-based fund Morphosis Venture Capital also have participated in the funding round. 

The development has come after a gap of two years when Uolo raised $3 Mn (INR 20 Cr) in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Blume Ventures and Omidyar Network India.

Founded in 2013 by Pallav Pandey, Ankur Pandey and Siddharth P. Singh, Uolo offers learning programs in coding and English speaking. As per the startup, both of these courses are aligned with partner school’s curriculum.

Further, Uolo said it partners with private schools and helps them develop online capabilities. This includes creating phygital programs matching school curriculums. It also allows third-party education publishers and content creators to develop physical learning programs for K-12 students. 

“The first wave of edtech companies in India have proven consumer interest in online education. However, they lacked a cost-effective distribution. We believe that there will be a new generation of edtech companies capable of building organic, low-cost distribution, allowing students to study at $10 per year rather than $10 per hour,” said Anton Farlenkov, managing director of Winter Capital. 

The startup claims to have partnered with more than 8500 schools across India and offer service to over 3.7 Mn students. It plans to introduce more programs across STEAM subjects in the next few months.

In 2016, it bagged nearly INR 1.4 Cr in seed funding while in 2014, it raised $78K funding from investors. 

Its cap table includes Purvi Ventures,  Sunstone Business School’s Rajul Garg, and Vipin Arora and Purvi Capital LLC’s  Ravi Srivastava, among others.

“The edtech solutions need to build on top of 6 hours spent in school daily and magnify the outcomes by leveraging the smartphones available at home. The lack of alignment with school, together with exorbitant pricing is causing edtech companies to falter”, said Pallav Pandey, CEO of Uolo.

In India, it competes with the likes of Eupheus Learning and Teachmint, among others. 

According to an In42 report, the edtech sector is the worst-hit startup segment in the financial year 2023 (FY23), impacted hugely by a couple of factors including low-revenue. 

However, in the first half of 2022, edtech startups had secured $2.1 Bn funding, a decline of 41% as compared to $4.73 Bn raised in the first half of 2021. 

After seeing immense growth during the pandemic years, the edtech sector has now lost its sheen. Market downtrend, opening of schools and colleges, low investor sentiments and global disruption are some of the factors that have hampered the growth of this segment.

To acclimatise with the changing environment, many edtech startups such as BYJU’S and Unacademy, among others have adopted hybrid business models. Apart from this, startups in this segment have taken extreme measures including downsizing business, closing unprofitable verticals and sacking employees to optimise cost. 

According to an Inc42 analysis, edtech startups have laid off more than 7,500 employees so far in 2022.