Kyt an EdTech startup raises $2.5 million funding from Sequoia’s Surge
November 30th 2020, Bangalore: Kyt, a global EdTech platform, announced on Monday that it has raised $2.5 million (18.4crores approx.) in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge. The learning platform is one of the 17 start-ups which are a part of the fourth cohort of Surge which is a bi-annual rapid scale-up program run by Sequoia Capital India for start-ups across Indian and South Asian regions. Titan Capital, along with other seed investors including Kunal Shah, Jitender Gupta, Amrish Rau, Allen Penn, and Martin Li were also the participants of the funding round.
Presently, the platform claims to have more than 20 teachers on board with courses spanning up to 12 weeks which are designed to meet requirements in specific areas of knowledge, outside the traditional curriculums like yoga, language, reading, and dance. The investment will be used in the expansion of its staff to 500 over the next 12 months and for exploring its first online global academy for extracurricular learning. EdTech has extended its plans to add more variety to the available courses by including chess, musical instruments, public speaking, creative writing, content creating skills, and so on.
"Tripti and I started Kyt to build something for our daughter. After speaking to several parents, we realized that there is a much larger need to provide high-quality courses that focus on the holistic and all-round development of the child, beyond just academics. With a strong team of curriculum designers, pedagogy experts, and education consultants, we embarked on this vision to build an online-first, global academy for extracurricular learning for kids," said Bhavik Rathod. Founded by husband-wife duo Bhavik Rathod and Tripti Ahuja in June 2020, the platform has its head offices in India and Singapore. Kyt efficiently uses technology as a medium to provide live online session to children aged between 5-15years. It mainly offers two learning approaches namely, Kyt Academy, which provides specific courses for skill expansion and Kyt Workshops, which are one-time sessions focussing on exploration rather than education. All courses are available to both private parties and small groups. Currently around a thousand students have taken a course or attended the workshops with the platform.
“The future of education is a hybrid of online and offline learning, and the market size for primary and secondary extracurricular learning is estimated to be $10 billion in India alone and around $200 billion globally. While most learnings used to happen in physical spaces, there will be rapid adoption of
online learning even beyond COVID-19, as these well-structured curriculums will build strong global communities, encouraging children to remain engaged over time,” Rathod said in a statement.
The platform has also been the recipient of acknowledgment and appreciation from celebrities like Ruel Varindani, choreographer and hip-hop artist, who made a statement saying, “I’ve always wanted to find a way to teach kids and open a dance academy. By exclusively partnering with Kyt, I am thrilled my dream of being part of a global academy where I can teach hip-hop, Bollywood, and more, is coming true. I am extremely excited about helping more children explore their creativity outside of their regular, academic curriculum,”.
The funding would be extremely beneficial for the start-up to get through a challenging year like 2020 in terms of survival as well as expansion. This cohort is also said to be a reflection of how the region’s start-up scenario will look and think for the upcoming years with strong economical impacts.
