Uolo, a Bengaluru-based school communication platform, has raised Rs 20 crore in its Pre-Series A funding round led by Omidyar Network India and Blume Ventures, the startup has announced on Tuesday, November 10, 2020.
Founded in 2014 by Pallav Pandey, Ankur Pandey and Siddharth Singh, Uolo provides an advanced communication platform for schools, students, and parents to communicate with each other through its mobile app. It also helps students continue to learn online after school hours. The company claims to have onboarded over 2,000 schools and 1 million students in more than 200 cities across India.
Speaking about the company and its plans in next two years, Pallav Pandey, Co-founder and CEO, Uolo, said in a statement,
“Schools as an institution shall continue to play an important role in how our children learn and grow into society. Once the school, teachers, parents, and students are digitally connected and this community moves online, it becomes possible to build on top of 6 plus hours of daily learning that happens inside the school. In the next two years, we plan to bring 20,000 schools comprising 10 million students to build an active online community.”
The startup plans to utilize the newly raised funds to expand its team across technology and operations, and enhance its offerings for schools and students.
Lauding the company and commenting on the investment, Sarvesh Kanodia, Principal at Omidyar Network India, said,
“Uolo has established itself as a leading parent-teacher communication platform. Through its low-cost, easy-to-use product offerings, Uolo is enabling schools to become digital. We are excited to back Pallav and team in their mission to scale the platform to create meaningful outcomes for millions of students.”
Uolo allows educators to send text, video, and images to parents on app. It works on SMS and supports all Indian languages. The platform also allows live online classes with recordings, share videos, give assignment, get submissions, share feedback, and more.
Sajith Pai, Director of Blume Ventures, also commented on the investment saying,
“COVID-19 and the rapid acceleration of digital learning has accelerated school adoption of technology and digital tools. In these times, Uolo has helped onboard hundreds of schools online, who have benefitted from Uolo’s communication and learning platforms.”
Uolo had previously raised around Rs 1.4 crore in seed funding from Purvi Ventures, Sunstone Business School director Rajul Garg, and Vipin Arora in 2016. Prior to that, the company had raised $78,000 from Ravi Srivastava, co-founder and managing partner at Purvi Capital LLC besides seven other individuals in 2014.
