Adda247, an edtech startup that offers coaching for Indian government job examinations, has raised $35 million in a new funding round that was joined by Google as a new investor. Of the total funding amount, Google contributed about $5 million, founder and CEO Anil Nagar told DealStreetAsia.
“Bringing Google on board is like a dream come true. Google is a big validation of our tech approach and the partnership,” Nagar said.
The latest funding round, which also saw participation from existing investors such as Westbridge Capital, Info Edge and Asha Impact, will be used to enhance its tech and product profile, expand its student counselling team and hire for some key leadership roles, the company said in a statement.
Founded as an offline coaching centre in Delhi in 2010 by Nagar and Saurabh Bansal, Adda247 provides online coaching for more than 300 government job exams in India, including Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), state PSCs, banking, Staff Selection Commission (SSC), teaching, defence and state exams, in 12 vernacular languages across mostly tier 2 and tier 3 cities. It currently has 22 million monthly active users and a total of 2 million paid users to date.
Following the new fundraise, the company plans to go deeper into the vernacular test preparation category by building new courses and setting up faculty for other state-level exams. It also aims to explore a few strategic acquisitions in the coming months to complement its offerings in the government job preparation category.
“In the short term, we want to focus on growing the government test prep business. The market is still fragmented and we see a huge scope for growth and hence we would like to consolidate the segment,” Nagar said.
While the company competes with all the leading edtech platforms that focus on government exam preparations, including Unacademy, its direct competitors include Testbook and Pariksha.
As the demand for online education slows and investor confidence wanes, edtech startups, which were once the darlings of investors, have been facing a funding crunch and resorting to drastic steps, including layoffs, to stay afloat. Gurgaon-based Adda247, however, has come across as an outlier. While the pandemic badly affected the company in 2021, it managed to raise around $20 million in a Series B funding round in November.
It also managed to turn profitable in July 2021. The company declined to disclose its profit figures.
Nagar said the latest fundraise was very smooth and they were able to close quickly.