Edtech Startup Makkajai Raises $250K Via LetsVenture

An educational gaming platform, makkajai has raised $250K (INR 1.6 Cr) in Seed funding from angel investors via LetsVenture.

The investors who participated in the round included Ananth Narayanan, CEO, Myntra; Anand Chandrasekaran, former CPO, Snapdeal; Mekin Maheshwari, former CPO, Flipkart; Ravi Garikipati, Divyesh Shah and Swastika Company.

The funding will be utilised to enhance technology and design in order to introduce more educational games in the coming year. It will also be used for marketing and revenue generation.

Founded in July 2014, by Roopesh Shenoy, Vinayak Palankar, Deep Shah and Abhishek Awadhani, makkajai combines educational games and learning analytics to create an adaptive learning platform. The platform claims to enable a personalised learning experience for kids. It also generates real-time reports for parents and teachers.

It has launched three games so far, namely,  Monster Math Classic, Monster Math and Monster Math Duels (multiplayer). According to an official statement, it has 1.5 Mn organic downloads and is used across 500+ schools in the US. The company claims to have an active user base of more than 100,000 and a consistent growth rate of 25-30%.

Commenting upon the investment, Vinayak Palankar, CMO and co-founder, makkajai said, “What makes makkajai unique is the use of design thinking methodology in building educational games – resulting in Monster Math being used by over 500 schools and 300,000+ parents across the world. Through this, we are solving the two most pressing problems in the education system – low engagement and lack of personalisation; a lethal combination which results in ineffectual learning outcomes.”

The games have an outreach across countries including US, UK, Australia, Canada,  and Germany.

Mekin Maheshwari, former CPO, Flipkart said, “I believe in the space of education through games. Having researched and read a bit about how we learn that belief has become stronger. The founders’ vision for making this an analytical platform where they are able to capture learning profiles of students and create personalised learning experiences is bold and compelling.”

Makkajai app is currently available on Android and iOS.

In August 2016, edtech company iAugmentor Labs Pvt. Ltd raised $149K (INR 1Cr) in seed funding from Rajasthan Angel Investor Network (RAIN) and other undisclosed investors. In the same month Genext Students, a technology-enabled student platform raised $209K (INR 1.4Cr) from 1Crowd, a crowdfunding platform for startups. Prior to this, in March, Bengaluru-based edtech startup Avagmah raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Kris Gopalakrishnan and Atul Nishar.

Other major players in the sector include Edukart, classteacher.com, Embibe, Toppr, UpGrad and AlmaMapper.

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