Toppr raises Rs45 crore from SAIF partners, Helion Venture, others

New Delhi: Online learning platform Toppr on Tuesday said it has raised Rs45 crore ($7 million) from existing investors SAIF Partners, Helion Venture Partners and FIL Capital Management to expand content and reach new geographies.

This takes the total capital raised by the four-year-old firm to $12 million. All three investors now hold 16% each in the company, founder and chief executive officer Zishaan Hayath said.

“The money is just to create a runway for another two years. I think what we want to achieve in the next two years, is that we want to be available for every single board in India. Right now, we offer 15 boards in the higher grades, but in the lower grades, we only offer about three or four boards. We want to be comprehensively available for all the 30 boards in India for all the states,” Hayath told Mint.

Toppr, managed by Mumbai-based Haygot Education Pvt. Ltd, is a learning app and website that provides courses complementing the subjects taught in schools. It caters to students between grades 5 and 12 and also offers material for competitive exam training.

The online education sector in India, buoyed by the success of Byju’s, is steadily growing with investors like Tiger Global Management, Kalaari Capital and Info Edge putting their money behind ventures focused on different areas: video tutorials, exam preparation, vocational and language courses. Toppr claims its differentiator is the ability to create personalized courses. Learners key in their details—class and subjects—and can opt to take competitive exam training alongside. Topics are taught through video lectures and regular online tests. “Since most of the subjects are over-lapped, this is very useful. The platform also tells the progress on CBSE preparation and for the competitive exam,” Hayath said. Users get a free trial for the platform for five days after which they have to pay a subscription fee. These are priced at Rs1,000-5,000 per month. Toppr has two million registered users and about 5% of them are paying subscribers, Hayath said.

Toppr will use the capital to expand its sales and marketing effort in new cities. It has a team of 100 people working on content and the core platform in Mumbai and a sales team of 200 people. Other cities where it has a presence include Hyderabad, Nagpur and Bengaluru.