Educational startups are on their ascent ever since people realized their utility which led to enormous growth in this sector. Acumen Fund which is a social venture capital investor has invested in two Hyderabad-based startups namely, Ignis Careers and Standard of Excellence in Education and Development(SEED).
It has invested $250K in Ignis Careers and $650K in SEED. The amount invested will be used to strengthen the curriculum and the processes needed to scale up the operations so that these startups could cater to a large number of people and improve the current state of education in the country as indicated by Manish Kumar, co-founder and CEO of SEED.
Ignis Careers was founded in 2007 and offers education and curriculum development, training on life skills and English Communication. The company is currently in association with B R Ambedkar Open University. It claims that it has reached more than 28000 students and 1000 teachers till date.
SEED was founded in 2013 which helps train and manage service to Low cost private schools and prove curriculum to them. It currently provides services to 2 schools in Hyderabad. It has also partnered with three schools since 2012.
On the said funding, Siddharth Tata, Associate Director at Acumen said, “Parents are increasingly demanding better education for their children and are anxious to see tangible improvements in learning outcomes. Both Ignis and SEED bring a unique combination of high-quality content, trained educators and management experience to bring about improvements in their schools and throughout India.”
Acumen focuses its investments on companies that provide products or services to the bottom-of- the-pyramid (BoP) income groups. The fund, founded in 2001, invests in India, Pakistan, East Africa, West Africa and Latin America. In India, Acumen invests in agriculture, education, energy, water sanitation, housing and healthcare.This is the first time Acumen forayed into education sector after it invested in pre-school chain Hippocampus learning Centres and vocational training company Edubridge Learning.
According to Annual Status of Education Report nearly 31% of children in primary classes are in private schools and the count is on a rise because parents want to provide better education to their kids and escape the government school system. This is where startups like these come in to increase quality of education even in low-cost private schools.
