Online test prep startup Toppr raises Rs 65 cr for expansion

Mumbai-based online test prep startup, Toppr.com, has closed a funding round of Rs 65 crores (approximately $10 million) led by Fidelity Growth Partners India, and existing investors, SAIF Partners and Helion Ventures.

The company, founded in 2013, initially raised an angel round from Kasyap Deorah and Abhishek Jain, and a series A round of Rs 12 crores ($2 million) in 2014.

The funding will be used for building the team and expanding into lower grades (5^th to 8^th grades). (Read previous funding story here.)

“We started off with just preparation for competitive exams. Now, with the recent rounds of funding, we are entering subject learning and training for academic exams for lower grades as well,” said Zishaan Hayath, who founded Toppr, along with Hemanth Goteti, in 2013.

Toppr helps students prepare for competitive exams – like the joint entrance exam (JEE) and medical exams — and other Olympiads and scholarship exams. The content, developed by Toppr itself, comprises a bank of over 45,000 questions and an algorithm that decides what questions the student should solve at any given time.

“We have a fleet of freelancers from IIT itself who prepare the modules and it is curated by a team before being dished out to the students,” said Zishaan in an earlier interview with YS.

A Toppr prep program costs an upward of Rs 2,900 for one, two or three year courses. These courses can be accessed on any platform, including mobile.

Current online content on Toppr has around 170,000 student subscribers across the country preparing for 20 competitive exams. With this expansion push, Zishaan hopes to onboard one million students onto Toppr by the end of the year and five million students by 2017.

Here’s what Kabir Narang, Managing Director, Fidelity Growth Partners India, says about Toppr,

Toppr provides a unique and compelling product with the potential to disrupt the exam preparation market. With its strong focus on enhancing a student’s exam prep experience, the company is well positioned to emerge as the leader in this space.

Though the test preparation market is growing at a rapid pace with multiple players like 100marks, MerTestBazaar, Testbook, Embibe and Edutor, trying to make a mark, the sector has only seen a few exits in the recent past. One of the latest ones was the acquisition of EasyPrep by Toppr for an undisclosed amount. Zishaan assures that there will be more.

“There are a lot of good startups coming up in the edu-tech sector, but the problem is their inability to scale. We are planning on acquiring a few companies like this because we know that they can scale with us,” said Zishaan.

According to Zishaan, there are two education startups in the pipeline to be acquired by Toppr at the end of the quarter.