EdTech startups are one of the few industries that are benefitting massively from this lockdown. Educational institutions have been taking help from EdTech startups for continuing the studies for their students. Mumbai-based WhiteHat Jr is expecting potential investment from Top venture capital, private equity and sovereign funds.
WhiteHat Jr is currently in market to raise around $50 million in a new funding round. GIC, the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, Renuka Ramnath-led-home grown private equity firm Multiples Alternate Asset Management and marquee venture firm Sequoia Capital are a few investors contemplating investing in the startup.
According to the sources, the discussions are in initial stage as of now. The company raised capital in late 2019 last from Owl Ventures, Omidyar Network and Nexus Venture Partners. This will be the startup’s first funding round in its 18-month life, if the things go well. In Series A and seed funding rounds, WhiteHat Jr has managed to raised about $11 million.
Bajaj, a former chief executive of Discovery networks India founded WhiteHat Jr in 2018. The startup runs in kindergarten to 12th grade (K-12) segment and facilitates learning of coding and helping the learners to build games, apps and animations using the basics of coding. They have built the course plan focused on product creation and teaching is done through live and interactive online classes.
These developments come at a time when every investment firm is eyeing EdTech firm closely because of its growth in past 2 months. General Atlantic and Facebook invested in Unacademy in February this year and Vedantu raised $24 million in funding previously. Owl Ventures is an education focused investment company and it also backs country’s biggest EdTech startup, Byju’s. This situation can be easily compared to the profits FinTech companies made during demonetization.