Test prep startup Toppersnotes raises $1M in funding led by Inflection Point Ventures

Test preparation startup Toppersnotes today announced it has raised $1 million in a seed funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures, a Gurugram-based angel investment firm. The round also saw participation from LetsVenture, PlanB Capital, Pulkit Agrawal (CEO, Trell), Ashish Sharma, (MD, Innoven Capital), and other notable angel investors.

This is IPV's 40th deal for 2021 and aims to invest Rs 155 crore across 60 plus startups by the end of this year. The firm had previously invested in Boingg, Buyofuel, Vanity Wagon, Playto Labs, among several others.

Founded in 2015 by IIT Bombay alumnus Devendra Dhaka, Arpit Bansal, and Ayush Agrawal. The founders saw a huge gap in the quality of solutions in the market across the price spectrum. Being toppers themselves and with the constant engagement with teaching faculties, the team has realized a “Phygital” solution to bringing coaching-like quality at a low price.

The platform is currently active in 70+ exams like UPSC, GATE, NEET, IIT, SSC, BANK & state-level government job exams solving a real issue of unavailability of affordable solutions in tier 2 and 3 cities, and below markets with an intention to emerge as a market leader in the test prep market segment.

According to a statement, The Jaipur-based edtech startup currently has more than 300,000 registered students primarily from tier-3 and below townships on its platform. It aims to make self-study more efficient & personalized with the use of technology and provide learning at 1/10th of a coaching institute fees.

 “With personalized learning, guidance & performance analytics features, we will disrupt the test prep space, where students, even today, rely heavily on textbooks, far distant coaching and local tutors," Ayush Agrawal, Founder, Toppersnotes, said.

"We intend to leverage technology and content to reduce the service layer present in the education industry thus democratizing education and making it affordable for everyone. IPV got co-aligned with our vision; with their mentorship & support, we would be able to define how tier 2 and below students will learn, despite low family incomes," he adds.

Speaking on the investment, Mitesh Shah, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures, said:

“Prepping for competitive tests is one of the most important journeys in a student life cycle as they decide the direction of one’s career. While metros offer many options to students, it is the smaller cities where we have seen the gap in the quality of mentoring and preparation of exams. Students run pillar to post and use peer group support. Toppernotes is solving this problem for the Bharat audience, which is a far bigger market than the metros and immensely underserved.”

With the Phygital solution (to be scaled in the next 6 months), students will have access to personalized content delivery, enhanced performance tracking & guidance in terms of personalized revision planners and learning schedules. To bring personalization features and guidance to the study table, the team will be leveraging AI/ML and NLP algorithms on top of their deeply structured learning data of the students, the startup said in a statement.

Currently, Their phygital solution offers physical notes for learning and a tech-based app platform for test prep.

Edtech has become one of the fastest-growing industries in recent times with test prep as the fastest-growing category in online education. More than 8 crore students prepare for more than 600 exams every year with more than 60% of these students residing in small towns and facing affordability issues during their preparation.

The market is huge and fragmented which Toppersnotes is trying to disrupt by creating a comprehensive and affordable solution, it adds.

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