Award-winning early learning company PlayShifu has secured additional $7 million growth capital from Mars Growth, a Liquidity and MUFG joint venture fund.
The Bengaluru and San Francisco-based company plans to use the additional capital to keep pace with its unprecedented growth in the US market as well as another 35 markets.
Founded in 2016 by Vivek Goyal and Dinesh Advani, PlayShifu is a leading early learning tech toy company that develops educational play experiences for kids aged between three and 12 years old. The company creates engaging and immersive augmented reality experiences that help children develop foundational, STEAM and other essential skills in life.
PlayShifu currently has more than 650,000 users across 35 countries, including India, the US, the UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, and France.
Dinesh Advani, Co-founder & COO of PlayShifu, said,
“Our mission is to create immersive, educational toys that help children develop crucial skills for life including logical reasoning, creativity, math and spelling, and more. As our business grows, we are excited at the prospect of developing our suite of products so that even more children can play with educational purpose.”
NavasEbin Mohammed, Investment Director at Mars Growth, added,
“PlayShifu is an example of a company at the forefront of changing educational trends. In a world that is increasingly moving towards harnessing the power of technology, PlayShifu’s ability to see the future opportunity for educational play solutions, coupled with its demonstrated ability to innovate, means that its growth trajectory is likely to continue well into the future.”
Boosted by the pandemic trend of children learning and playing from home, PlayShifu has achieved strong consecutive years of growth including 150% year-over-year growth in revenue for three years running. This year, the company completed a $21 million Series B funding round. According to a press statement, this latest financing will help the company launch an additional eight products this calendar year.
Ron Daniel, Founder & CEO of Liquidity Group, also commented saying,
“It is rewarding to contribute to the growth story of companies that are not only succeeding from a business perspective, but are also doing good things for the world. We are excited to work with PlayShifu as they continue to develop fun learning experiences for children. We are building a compelling track record of using our personal investing experience in combination with our ‘Liquidity Analysis’ analytical solution to quickly analyze high potential companies so we can easily deploy capital, and not stand in the way of their ambitions and growth plans.”
Mars Growth is a joint venture between Liquidity Capital and MUFG. It offers tech startups a one-of-a-kind funding alternative, enabling them to double down on their hyper-growth without giving up equity. Mars Growth invests in SaaS providers that demonstrate over $3M in ARR and 30% year-over-year growth, with an average ticket size of $3M-$100M.
