OnlineTyari Raises Series A Funding from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Contrarian Capital and Others

OnlineTyari (OT) has announced that it has raised an equity investment from the Michael And Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF), 3One4 Capital (an early stage venture capital fund backed by Mohandas Pai), Contrarian Capital, Tracxn Labs and couple of other investors and angels. MSDF is the lead investor in OT’s Series A investment round of INR 20 crores. Existing investors in OnlineTyari including Vikram Chachra (Partner at Eight Capital), Globevestor, Advantedge, Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar (Co-founders of Ixigo) also participated in the current round.

OT offers a mobile application that allows highly customized, curated and vernacular test preparation content delivered through very low internet bandwidths. It offers a full suite of solutions including entrance tests for public sector units, government jobs and higher education institutes. The comprehensive preparation materials include full mock tests, current affairs articles and other study material on a platform where candidates can practice, benchmark their performance and improve.

Since its launch, OT has become one of the fastest growing edtech platforms today - growing ten times in the past 12 months in terms of time spent by users on average, monthly with nearly 4 million downloads with over 400,000 daily active users.  The funds are planned to be used towards expanding OnlineTyari’s operations – to offer the platform across all major Indian languages by 2017 end. The funds will aso be used for opportunistic acquisitions in synergistic businesses across technology and education domains.

OnlineTyari was founded in 2014 by Vipin Agarwal and Bhola Ram Meena, both graduates of IIT Kanpur. They have have extensive technology and startup experience and have worked in an advisory role with the Government of India on the Digital India initiative.

Vipin Agarwal, CEO and Co-Founder, Online Tyari, said, “India is witnessing a paradigm shift toward online educational services. We are proud to be at the center of this and excited to partner with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation as we move into the next phase of our growth. This partnership will help us introduce new business best practices and to achieve the scale needed to reach our goal: improving education and skill development for more than 100 million people every year across India.”

Bhola Ram Meena, Founder, OnlineTyari, said, “The market for government and public sector entrance exams is huge with more than 20 million aspirants every year. These exams are very different from top-end engineering college entrance exams, and we have customized our solution for this large, yet unique target segment. We believe our market advantage comes from the learnings that can be generated by the sheer number of users on our platform.”

Mohandas Pai, re-investing in the Company via 3one4 Capital, had this to say: "India's education system serves the largest student population on the planet, and it is imperative that we prepare this generation to be equipped with skills that make them globally competitive. A vital component of an inclusive system is to ensure that students have access to the highest quality content in the languages and mediums of their choosing. Online Tyari has done tremendously well to deliver on its mission and address the concerns of over 10 million Indians writing the competitive exams for government jobs in multiple languages. Having proven product-market fit for this highly-engaged adoption segment, the company can now go deeper to become an intelligent platform for the best quality multi-lingual educational content in the country. We are proud to be part of this mission and excited to be working with this team to scale this value proposition."

Vikram Chachra, Partner at Eight Capital, said, “Vipin and Bhola belong to an exceptional breed of founders. They combine the clarity of vision and exceptional execution necessary to create India's largest mobile education platform in less than 24 months. The current round of funding will enable OnlineTyari to achieve its mission of transforming the lives of tens of millions of young rural and semi-urban Indians across the nation.”

Prachi Windlass, Education Director, India, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, said, “OT has already disrupted the market for test prep in India by creating a personalized, data-backed solution for a large but often ignored market segment. The platform approach-- that curates content from multiple partners-- enables them to provide high quality exam content with a very short time-to-market. This is very important for this market segment as students may appear for multiple exams and need a one-stop solution. OT will play a huge role in helping students from smaller towns and low-income families access test prep services.”