BrightChamps, an Indian edtech startup that is striving to connect the learning space left by K12 schools, announced on Monday it has raised $51 million in a new financing round and $63 million since beginning a year ago as the Goa-headquartered firm looks to extend its footprints in over ten nations.
The startup, which is valued at around $500 million in the latest investment round led by Premji Invest (the private investment office of technology billionaire Azim Premji), teaches kids programming and other skills in over 10 markets, including some in Southeast Asia, as well as the U.S., and Canada, BrightChamps co-founder and chief executive Ravi Bhushan stated.
Bhushan, who was homeschooled and earlier served as the chief technology and product officer at property portal PropTiger, said schools across the world are failing to teach kids several important life skills. “It’s not an India problem. Schools across the globe are teaching kids how to change the style of text in Microsoft Word in the name of technology,” he said.
The startup — which has garnered over a hundred thousand registered students and gained profitability — is “building a ‘weapon of mass instruction” and is leading the disruptive wave which will make India one of the biggest exporters of transformative digital education,” said Deborah Quazo, Managing partner at GSV Ventures, in a statement.
Over a thousand teachers over the globe have joined BrightChamps to teach kids, Bhushan stated. “Children have the option to learn skills in any local language they prefer,” he said, adding that the startup is working on expanding its offerings. It will soon add financial literacy to its curriculum, he said.
Bhushan said the startup’s growth has been entirely organic so far, and it has not used any money raised from the investors. “We are growing solely with the money we have earned from our customers,” he said.
BrightChamps has been one of India’s most discussed startups in the past year and has already been approached by one of the largest edtech giants in the country with a buyout offer.
Bhushan refused to comment on any acquisition offer BrightChamps has received but said he is building the startup with a very long-term thought and is not looking to make short-term transactions. “Education, as you can tell, has been my passion since childhood. I am here to build an iconic brand,” he continued.
There’s notable whitespace in the category in which BrightChamps operates, he said, when asked how the startup plans to deploy the fresh funds. “One area is the potential of kids learning from each other. We have done experiments around it. So we are going to launch a peer-to-peer experience,” he said, adding that eventually, the startup wants to build a platform like Stack Overflow for kids. “We are also looking to host olympiads and tech hackathons,” he said.
BrightChamps is also exploring opportunities to acquire some firms that share its mission and sensibilities, he said.
“In less than a year after inception Brightchamps has established itself as one of the fastest-growing Ed-tech companies in the markets that it serves. Leveraging Human Resources globally to deliver personalised experiences, along with the unique ability to hyper differentiate learning pathways, Brightchamps is on the path to proving that the power of data and learning can be combined for differentiated outcomes,” said T Kurien, Managing Partner of Premji Invest, in a statement.
