Despite the recent boom in consumer-oriented learning platforms in India, the vast majority of students in the South Asian nation remain unserved. The existing B2C offerings are expensive for most students and are heavily geared towards those preparing for the competitive exams in high school.
LEAD school, a nine year old startup, addresses this separation from Use of an infrastructure that already has a large reach in the country: Schools. And the model works.
WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures, existing funders, announced Thursday that they are leading Series E funding for the LEAD School. The new round of funding, which brings the overall LEAD School boost to $ 170 million, has doubled the startup’s valuation to $ 1.1 billion in nine months.
Founded by the couple Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, LEAD School works with thousands of K-12 schools where it has integrated their platform that helps them secure books and other resources from vendors, reducing middlemen and achieving quality assurance. Most schools serve low-income families, and LEAD estimates that by April, when the new session begins, there will be over 5,000 schools.
The couple Smita Deorah and Sumeet Mehta founded the LEAD School in 2012. Photo credit: LEAD School
But more importantly, and why the couple started the LEAD School in the first place, is that the startup is helping teachers design the curriculum and finding ways to better communicate the concepts to students and evaluate learning outcomes.
The startup works closely with students to understand the areas where improvement is needed. LEAD School found that the greatest challenge for most students is understanding English, a factor that also affects how they understand most other subjects.
Focusing on clarifying the fundamentals as a priority has helped students at LEAD School-powered facilities achieve over 70% proficiency in all subjects, Deorah said in an interview with TechCrunch.
“If India is to reach its true potential, its schools will have to change significantly so that every child can reach their true potential. But in K-12 everyone was talking about Edtech going straight to the students by bypassing schools. And everyone is focused on exam preparation and teaching. Because people have accepted that schools cannot be improved. But we thought differently. A child spends six hours in school and one hour in class. If we can transform schools, imagine what is possible ?! So we focused on school edtech, ”she said.
“Typically for a school that works with LEAD, this improves student learning outcomes by 20-25%,” she said, adding that the startup expects to have 2 million students in April. “What makes us proud is the result of the students. This has helped us to reach the order we are at today. “
The pandemic, which has led New Delhi and state governments to shut down schools several times, has created an additional barrier for students. Most of these students come from families who do not have multiple smartphones or other devices at home.
To address this, LEAD School has worked with teachers to offer both live and asynchronous virtual classes so students can see lessons and do their homework more flexibly, she said.
“We are talking about households in which children do not have personal devices. Of the children we look after, barely five to ten percent of parents have bought a tablet for them, ”she says. “Synchronous learning is not possible in this ecosystem.”
“The educational quality of LEAD is already revolutionizing the way Indian students are educated on a large scale,” said Rohan Malhotra, managing partner at Good Capital, a venture firm that is one of the startup’s early supporters.
The LEAD School expects annual sales of 80 million US dollars for the new academic year. The startup plans to use the fresh funds for product and curriculum innovations. It aims to reach 25 million students and increase its ARR to $ 1 billion.
With over 250 million students, India is home to one of the largest education markets in the world. Indian parents spend a lot on their children’s education as they see it as the key to economic progress and a better life.
Numerous companies, including the edtech giants Byju’s, Unacademy and Vedantu, as well as American giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, are trying to reach students in the country.
“[LEAD School] acts as the Intel Inside for affordable schools, guaranteeing low / middle income students 70% proficiency in all subjects and all grade levels and exceeding the guarantee, ”said Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner at GSV Ventures, in a statement.
“We at GSV believe that the guarantee of domination is a revolutionary offer in the K12 educational space and has the potential to change society for the students. With this strong and unique value proposition and exceptional management team, LEAD is well on its way to becoming the world’s largest and most influential edtech company for schools, ”she said.
