Bengaluru-based edtech startup StayQrious has raised $2 Mn in seed funding round from Learn Capital’s dedicated seed fund Learnstart, Draper Associates, Y Combinator, First Principles VC Nitin Sharma, Lavni Ventures and Japan-based Dream Incubator.
Founded in 2020 by Aanand Srinivas, StayQrious is India’s newest learning platform for students, with a focus on STEM foundations, starting with coding literacy. With a unique teaching and learning approach – ‘Learn to code and then code to learn’, StayQrious focuses on coding fundamentals for students in the age group 8-14, with an initial focus on metropolitan cities, Tier-I and select Tier-II cities.
The company also focuses on collaboration, critical thinking and creativity through these virtual classrooms. The company was a part of Y Combinators’ winter batch that graduated earlier this year, along with Able Jobs, Chutney, Deep Source, Farm Theory and others.
Aanand Srinivas, Founder and CEO, said, “When I was in the US, I saw that while I could solve a physics problem faster than anyone else out there, no one had ever prepared me in my life for a question like, ‘If you had $15 million dollars and two years of time, what ambitious problem will you work on?.’ That’s when I realised our education system trains us from a young age just to be obedient executors of other people’s ideas, not to come up with our own original ideas. I started StayQrious with the vision of using school subjects as a means to teach our next generation the skills and attitudes that will make them ambitious innovators rather than obedient executors.”
The startup will use this funding to build its product, coach tools and instructional content that will enable its ‘classroom of the future’.