Adda247, India’s leading government test prep platform, has raised $35 million in a round led by WestBridge Capital. The round also saw the addition of Google as a new investor and participation from the existing investors, including Info Edge and Asha Impact. The company will invest the raised capital in enhancing its tech and product profile, expanding its student counselling team and hiring for some key leadership roles.
“The company’s genesis lies in solving education problems in towns and villages. We come from a rural background and have seen people suffering due to a lack of guidance and quality education. All our offerings focus on ‘Building for Bharat’ as 85% of our user base comes from Tier 2,3 & 4 cities. We want to help create a level playing field by providing all kinds of learning solutions to students from all backgrounds,” said Anil Nagar, Founder & CEO, Adda247.
Founded by Anil Nagar and Saurabh Bansal in 2016, Adda247 caters to the learning needs of millions of students from Tier II and Tier III cities in India. It offers quality content in 12+ vernacular languages for more than 500 government exams making it the largest ed-tech startup in the government exam preparation category. After this new raise, the company plans to go deeper into the vernacular test preparation category by building new courses and setting up faculty for other state-level exams. It also aims to explore a few strategic acquisitions in the coming months to complement its offerings in the government job preparation category. Adda247 currently has 22 million monthly active users, and a total of 2 million paid users till date.
“At Info Edge, we are really excited to be doubling down on our investment in Adda247 as it has emerged as a dominant leader in the government exam preparation category with significant improvement in learning outcomes for its students. Adda247 is also one of the very few scaled-up tech companies which are profitable and growing very fast. We are confident of the team’s ability to accelerate growth from hereon in their massive category,” said Ms Kitty Agarwal Partner, Info Edge Ventures.
Mr. Pramod Bhasin, Co-Founder Asha Ventures said “Anil & Saurabh continue to demonstrate how to build a world-class ed-tech company, with students and outcomes at the centre. At Asha Ventures we are proud to be early believers and continue to back the company in their journey to transform the education landscape of the country.”
Solid business fundamentals, sustainable business and outcome focussed approach has been the DNA of the company. In the short term, the company plans to focus on building a vernacular test preparation business by going deeper into local language learning needs and solving the problem state by state. And in the long term, they plan to work beyond government test preparation and solve unemployment problems at a broader level.
Mr. Sandeep Singhal of WestBridge Capital commented, “Anil and Saurabh have worked tirelessly to build a category leader in the govt exam preparation space which is a very large market. It is one of the rare profitable ed-tech companies in India and is also growing at a rapid pace.”
Adda247 aims to empower every Indian youth by providing them with career guidance and quality education, who usually have to put up with the substandard quality of courses provided by the local offline players in this highly unorganized and fragmented market. The platform offers comprehensive solutions for all learning needs including – Online Live Classes, on-demand video courses, mock tests, e-books etc.
