BW Accelerate's Education eCommerce Startup Fastudent Raises Pre-Series A Round from a Group of Investors

Fastudent, Indian B2B2C education e-commerce marketplace has announced a Pre-Series A fund raise from a group of investors including Kanwaljit Sing (Fireside Ventures), Ajay Lakhotia (former Vertex Venture Director) and Pavan Ongole (former SoftBank Director). Ashish Gupta, Trustee Ashoka University and former COO of eValueServe who invested in angel round also participated.

Founded by Gaurav Barman and Geetanjali Khanna, the e-commerce start up will utilize this round of funding to expand into Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune etc and strengthen their technology platform. Fastudent currently offers this service to schools in Delhi NCR only.

Commenting on the funding, Kanwaljit Singh, Founder Fireside Ventures , said: “Fastudent has tapped into a consumer need for School-endorsed education supplies - coupled with the convenience of e-commerce deliveries. The young & dynamic team intends to service the education fraternity like never before by creating a highly personalized brand experience for its audience."

Fastudent with its current capability to service the complete education bandwidth viz. from Playgroups to Post Graduation, has partnered with more than 200 education institutes. Using Fastudent’s exclusive technology platform, the institutes can now have their own customized white labeled e-Commerce stores .The Company runs end to end operations to support the transactions received on these stores from order receipt till the last mile delivery.

With a dedicated consumer base of 1.2 million students, Fastudent has serviced more than 90,000 orders till date. Ajay Lakhotia, ex-Vertex Venture, added "Vertical E-Commerce has the capability to build specialized products and services around its target audience and develop deeper engagement with customers. Fastudent could eventually become the 8dol.com of India." (8Dol.com, a Chinese campus O2O services provider backed by several VC investors, and has raised an extended Series B round worth RMB200 million ($30 million).

Servicing an unprecedented range of academic supplies ranging across 32 categories including Books, Stationery, Digital Learning, Branded Merchandise, Augmented Reality, Sports, Uniforms, Shoes and more, the edTech startup boasts of a focused educational catalogue of 1,00,000 + products, spanning across 500 brands.

“...I believe Fastudent will be India's #1 student network aligned with parents and teachers. From a curated marketplace for every purchase in a school year, to a deeper understanding of their needs around learning…” added Softbank’s Pavan Ongole.

Speaking about the development, Geetanjali Khanna, Co-founder & COO, Fastudent added, “India’s education supplies market is highly fragmented and disorganized, we at Fastudent are relentlessly engaged to bind the Indian education sector. Our focus is to provide a blended module of consultative, customized and modularized digital learning to learners. We aim to make "Education a happy experience" for students, parents and institutions."

Ashish Gupta who invested in the previous round stated , " The model has blended into the existing education ecosystem faster than our expectations."The last few months have been phenomenal in terms of the numbers and the market validation has been extremely encouraging. In the coming months, the team is going to build a strong foothold in the education supplies market.”

In November last year, the company had secured seed investment from a group of marquee angel investors led by Mr. Ashish Gupta, Founder and Trustee at Ashoka University.

Note: Fastudent is a BW ACCELERATE fastracked company.