BackFrontRow raises $14 million in Series A round
The round also saw participation from existing investors Lightspeed and Elevation Capital, along with angel investors
PremiumLearning platform for non-academic skills, FrontRow, on Wednesday said that it has raised $14 million as part of its Series A round, led by Eight Roads Ventures and GSV.
The round also saw participation from existing investors Lightspeed and Elevation Capital, along with angel investors, including artists Vishal Dhadlani and Raftaar; Cred founder Kunal Shah; Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal, and ShareChat co-founder Farid Ahsan.
The nine-month-old startup focuses on providing non-academic courses, including singing, music composition, cricket, photography, and film-making from top influencers in the respective fields. The platform currently has more than 100 courses live, and follows a community and cohort-based approach for learning.
“70% of learning is actually outside the classroom and that’s the part that hasn’t been solved yet. We enable people to learn from the best, and the small cohorts and community create a learning experience miles ahead of anything out there. In fact we see over 100,000 users learn through our communities every month," said Mikhil Raj, co-founder of FrontRow.
The company now claims that it has scaled its platform to more than 50,000 paid learners across 2,000 cities worldwide. FrontRow had earlier raised $3.2 million as a part of its seed round led by Lightspeed, Elevation and Deepika Padukone’s Family Office, earlier this year.
“As investors we’ve been a big champion of the role technology will play in disrupting multiple sectors, including education. We believe the market is highly underserved with strong secular trends in digital adoption of non-academic learning driven by limited availability of qualified instructors, flexibility in scheduling and the lack of access to structured curriculum," said Aditya Systla, partner, Eight Roads Ventures.
“Frontrow has uncovered a unique approach to go after its mission of enabling Indians to learn and follow their passion. As Day 0 investors in the company, we have been amazed to see the response and love for the product, and the way in which the team has iterated to make this happen. This makes us super excited to extend our commitment in this round," said Chirag Chadha, vice president at Elevation Capital.
The company plans to use the funds to scale its offerings across 10 categories, translating into more than 300 course offerings on the platform, over the next year.
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