Lucknow-based edtech startup EduGorilla has raised Rs 5.3 crores in a pre-Series A funding round from Auxano Entrepreneur Fund and group of Angels led by Venture Garage to step up its marketing and sales efforts.
Other angels participated in the round include SucSEED Venture Partners, Pune Angels, Hem Angels, and VGAngels.
Founded in 2016, EduGorilla provides multilingual test series on a digital platform using innovative technologies. The platform facilitates students’ exam preparation with online mock tests that can be accessed 24/7 from any part of the world. It encapsulates every exam held in the country, right from national and international levels to state and school-level exams, and provides the right questions to practice and the right approach to solve them.
Launched its first test series in November 2018, EduGorilla has built a set of technology tools to reduce the turnaround time for conducting a demand analysis as well as for the creation and distribution of content. The platform currently caters to over 1200 competitive exams in five languages with emphasis on state-level competitive examinations, with more than 2 crore users.
Commenting on the funding and how it will help the company, Rohit Manglik, Founder and CEO, EduGorilla, said in a statement,
“The funding strengthens our resolve to be a formidable pillar of support to students through our top-notch content and leveraging of cutting-edge technology. It will be deployed to step up our marketing and sales efforts to cater to the recent surge in users. Over 7.5 crore applicants appear for state-level competitive examinations in India every year that is an untapped opportunity for us. Approximately, 93% of our target audience hails from rural India and barely knows English.”
With the funding, EduGorilla plans to hire marketing and sales professionals and expand its teams across 15 cities in India. The company currently has teams in five cities – Delhi, Jaipur, Indore, Ahmedabad and Lucknow. EduGorilla also aims to cater to 6-7 lakh users daily from the existing 70,000, besides developing content for over 3,000 competitive examinations in nine vernacular languages with fresh capital.
Speaking about the company and its future plans, Shashwat Vikram, Co-founder and CTO, EduGorilla, said,
“We use a mix of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing for predictive analysis of on-demand examinations as well for content development. The automated workflow process has reduced our time drastically to 48 hours to generate content. Moreover, the development of top-notch vernacular content along with innovative distribution strategies has reaffirmed speed, credibility and accessibility as among our value propositions. We are now planning to expand marketing and sales teams across 15 cities in India as a part of our expansion strategy to make further inroads into this space.”
EduGorilla has built an AI-powered demand and predictive algorithm to assess the operational profitability of various competitive examinations. This analyses two key variables – a dynamic variable identifying the type of opening, number of vacancies and under which state government and department a particular examination falls. The second variable maps the trends in this regard like searches on Google, e-commerce portals and its portal for the content/publications. This assessment helps EduGorilla to identify primary focus examinations. Subsequently, EduGorilla generates the test preparation content and mock tests for a particular exam in just 48 hours through automated workflow. Its AI-powered software automatically converts the test content to a book format that can be purchased via e-commerce platforms.
Acknowledging the company’s product knowledge and expertise, Leadership Team, Auxano Capital Advisors, said,
“With digital being the approach and EduGorilla with its product knowledge and positioning, is poised to tap the opportunity in the competitive examination space. With its expertise in the vernacular language (5 and growing) examinations, will only add to its market leadership position.”
Vivek Kumar, CEO of Venture Garage, feels EduGorilla addresses a large need gap in small-town India and is well placed to become a dominant player.
EduGorilla operates on a subscription-based model in B2C with monthly or yearly offerings in the price bracket of Rs 99 to Rs 699. The company claims to have witnessed a 100% surge in sales during the COVID-19 lockdown.
According to a press statement, EduGorilla had earlier raised funding from Turbostart, a national program by Bengaluru-based InnovationQore that identifies and nurture 25 innovative startups every six months.
