SUMMARY
With This Funding Round, Flintobox’s Seed Stage Investor GSF Accelerator Takes An Exit
Chennai based Flintobox has raised $7 Mn in a Series A funding round led by early-stage venture capital firm Lightbox. Existing investors Globevestor, Ashwin Chadha, Asian E-Commerce Alliance and Mauj Mobile also participated in this round among others. The development was confirmed by a Flintobox spokesperson.
Flintobox is an educational subscription ecommerce startup designed to engage children in an activity-based learning. It raised $279K (INR 1.8 Cr) from a group of investors led by GSF Accelerator along with Globevestor, a global online venture capital platform based in San Mateo in California; Asian Ecommerce Alliance GmBH and People Group in October 2014.
With this deal, GSF Accelerator has taken an exit from Flintobox. The startup will use the newly raised funding to expand its business in the unorganised pre-school segment through its enterprise offering, ‘FlintoClass’, which is an activity-based pre-school system for independent preschools.
FlintoClass, termed as ‘Preschool in a box’ was launched in June 2017. It has already reached more than 350 preschools in 25+ cities and has changed the lives of more than 4500 children in India. “By the same time next year, we aim to reach 1000 preschools and in the next 5 years, every child will grow in a Flinto environment. We’re also aspiring towards a global expansion, starting with South and Middle-East Asia”, Arunprasad Durairaj, Flintobox co-founder and CEO said.
The team aims to use the funds to consolidate its leadership position and to expand to even the remotest parts of India. Specifically, the founders are looking to deepen their leadership team across verticals for both the enterprise and home products. Funds will also be used to strengthen the company’s leadership teams across product development, logistics and supply chain, marketing and sales verticals.
Started by Vijaybabu Gandhi and Arunprasad Durairaj in 2013, Flintobox is a theme-based monthly activity box for 3-7-year-old children, it is designed to engage children in a meaningful way at home. Every month, there’s a new theme, filled with activities based on science, art and craft, custom illustrated books and games are delivered to the customers.
Flintobox offers carefully selected content that covers numerous development areas including fine motor, cognitive and gross motor, creativity, exploration, language, and social skills. Arunprasad Durairaj added, “Flinto is revolutionising the way children across India learn and play. Today, we have more than 4 lakh customers for Flintobox in over 700 cities and towns in the country. After establishing a dominating presence in the home space, we’re expanding into the mostly unorganized and fragmented preschool market to provide the best early learning program for children across the length and breadth of the country.
Earlier in December 2016, Flintobox also sued ecommerce retailer Amazon for damages amounting to about $15K (INR 10 Lakhs). The company claims that Amazon illegally used the former’s brand name as a keyword to drive traffic to its own website.
Lightbox, on the other hand, floated its expansion fund of $54 Mn in December 2016. Its current portfolio includes companies like Faasos, Furlenco, Droom, Melorra, and Embibe. Earlier this year, in April 2017, Lightbox also led the $20 Mn funding round of Pune-based online food delivery startup Faasos.
After Embibe, Flintobox is another major investment in the edtech sector led by Lightbox. The sector trends strongly indicate the growing demand for innovative content in the edtech sector. today, parents are found to be aggressively looking for options to keep their kids away from gadgets. In such a scenario, startups like Flintobox offering subscription-based content have high chances of survival in the long run. Other startups offering similar services in subscription ecommerce segment include Xplorabox, Podsquad, Butterfly Fields, Genius Box, Einstein Box, Magic Crate, SP Robotics Work, Canary Crate, Small Brown Box and more.
