Bengaluru-based EdTech company Playto Labs has raised $531,000 (INR 4 Crore) in a seed funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures, one of India’s largest angel investment platforms.
The round also witnessed participation from partners of upcoming fund Disruptors Capital, including Raj Snehil Juneja (chief investment officer), Krishna Kumar (founder, Simplilearn), Kunal Walia (founder, Simpliwork), Shashwat Kumar (managing partner, Khetal Advisors), and entrepreneurs including Tonmoy Shingal and Ketan Kapoor (founders, Mettl), Sachin Sharma (founder, Townscript), Rajesh Razdan (founder, Devtron Labs), and Kuldeep Dhankar (SVP, CleverTap) among others.
With the latest funding, Playto Labs plans to build a strong team and expand its customer base.
Founded in 2020, Playto Labs helps kids develop the skills, curiosity, and confidence needed to win the future, all while having fun. It has a combination of hardware toys and online one-on-one sessions with teachers who act as facilitators. Playto Labs’ pedagogy makes students feel like they are playing while studying and helps them become creative and innovative problem solvers.
Playto was built to help students become future-ready through hands-on learning. The team is passionate about experiential learning and had earlier built Skyfi Labs, where they developed over 100 classroom and online experiential learning programs for UG-level students in technology. These programs had 400,000+ enrolments from 65 countries.
Speaking about the company, Pavan Ponnaganti, Founder and CEO of Playto Labs, said,
“Toys are a great way of learning for kids. My daughter (3-year-old) has learned many things just by playing with toys, although she hasn’t gone to pre-school due to COVID-19. But toys are unable to keep up with the learning needs of children as they grow up after 7 years of age. As a result, kids only depend on their school to learn.
Through Playto Labs, we are building products to address this and make play a more relevant learning method for kids above 7 years. The goal is to make kids truly enjoy science and tech, and we believe that is how the real innovators of the future will emerge. We currently offer Robotics products for kids, and we are delighted with the feedback we have been receiving from students and parents across the globe. We are launching more products soon.”
Playto helps not just in learning science, but also in building personality. Play-based learning encourages kids to explore, ideate, attempt, make mistakes and learn from them. As a result, a child becomes a curious life-long learner, an out-of-the-box thinker, and a confident innovator who can look beyond the obvious.
Commenting on the investment, Vinay Bansal, Founder & CEO, Inflection Point Ventures, said,
“Our children are growing in the age of technology and getting comfortable with using gadgets much before they learn to speak. Playto model is helping parents and their children to harness technology in a much more positive way where kids are learning something new and keeping themselves engaged in a constructive manner. Given the technology exposure in India, this is a booming market which got us interested in backing Playto.”
Playto Labs claims its products for kids already have paying customers from 33 countries within a year of its launch and have seen strong month-on-month growth.
