Edtech startup 3rdFlix Visual Effects raises funds from Exfinity Ventures, others

Mumbai: Education technology startup 3rdFlix Visual Effects Pvt. Ltd has raised $5 million in a pre-series A investment round led by Exfinity Venture Partners, a top company executive said.

The round also saw participation from other investors such as early-stage technology-focused venture funds YourNest Venture Capital, IDFC Parampara Fund, along with some high-net worth individuals. Investment banking firm Dexter Capital Advisors advised the startup on this transaction.

The Hyderabad-based software as-a-service (SaaS) firm uses visual effects and technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to create life-like experiences for enhanced learning.

“Our mission is to make learning more fun and increase retention rates using immersive and experiential content. We aim to reach every student, teacher and education institute in this mission,” Charu Noheria, co-founder at 3rdFlix said in an interview.

“In the next few months, we plan to open an office in Delhi to be closer to our clients in north India, and over the course of this year, we plan to expand further in India. We also have plans to expand internationally in the next 18 months. We are particularly targeting the US, UAE, Africa, and South-East Asia,” she added.

The company was started in 2014 by Subbarao Siddabattula, Ilangovel Thulasimani and Noheria. Since inception, Noheria said, sales have been doubling every year.

“We have signed more education institutes each year, and have grown the user base to reach more than 1.5 lakh students last year. Our team has also grown from 15 members two years ago to reach 150 strong professionals today,” she added.

The startup plans to use the capital raised to build content for students of Classes VI-XII.

“We plan to use a significant portion of the capital raised to complete science and math content for 6-12th grade levels. The content covers three-dimensional stereoscopic videos, simulations and AR/VR modules. The content is completely immersive and experiential,” said Noheria.

The firm provides its services through an AI-enabled learning platform under the brand name Corsalite. It also plans to launch another immersive content product under the brand name 3rdFlix before the end of this year.

“Our AI-based adaptive learning tech platform, Corsalite, has been around for more than two years and has gained good traction during this period. We have some of the biggest education institutes in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as our clients, including KKR’s Gowtham Educational Institutions with over 28 schools, Narayana Educational Institutions with more than 250 schools and Alphores Educational Institutions,” said Noheria.

“In the next three years, we want to establish ourselves as a leading immersive experiences company globally in the education segment. We want to get into creating experiential content for engineering college laboratories and medical college education. The intellectual property we are creating to deliver experiential content for the education sector is also reusable in other industry verticals, too. So in the long run, we may explore healthcare as an industry as founders have extensive prior experience in it,” she added.

The lead investor in 3rdFlix’s pre-series A round, Bengaluru-based Exfinity Venture Partners LLC, is led by IT industry veterans V. Balakrishnan, Mohandas Pai, Deepak Ghaisas and Girish Paranjpe. It is an early-stage technology fund that invests in business-to-business (B2B) and SaaS startups.

Its portfolio includes fitness discovery platform Fitternity Health E-solution Pvt. Ltd, logistics operations and delivery automation firm Locus.sh, and food waste reduction technology startup AgShift.