Chennai, NFAPost: Edtech startup StayQrious has announced approximately $2 million in seed funding from some of the world’s leading early-stage investors. Backers include Learnstart, the dedicated seed fund of Learn Capital, the world’s foremost edtech focused investor, and other global investors such as Draper Associates, Y Combinator, Nitin Sharma (First Principles VC), Lavni Ventures, and Dream Incubator (Japan).
The founding team behind StayQrious brings over 7 years of experience dedicated to the most powerful learning content and online pedagogy, having held leadership roles at organisations such as Byju’s and Khan Academy.
StayQrious is pioneering a unique approach to teach core STEM subjects like science and math through the joy of coding. With a major focus on experiential learning, social thinking and applicability, it strives for a major overhaul of the existing education system, which is largely based on archaic curricula and teaching methods.
Established in the year 2020, StayQrious is the newest, cutting-edge learning platform for students, with a focus on STEM foundations, starting with coding literacy. The brand believes that the Indian education system is at the cusp of revolution, led by rapid advancements in cognitive science and computing technology.
Recognising the opportunity, StayQrious aims to catalyze this revolution by designing the ‘classroom of the future’ from first principles of cognitive science that leverages an innovative learning format and uses technology to scale it to billions of students.
With a unique teaching and learning approach – ‘Learn to code and then code to learn’, StayQrious focuses on coding fundamentals in the first year targeting students in the age group 8-14, with an initial focus on metropolitan cities, tier -1 and select tier – 2 cities, StayQrious envisions preparing children for life and not just for exams. With the vision of being the most student centric company in the world embedded in its DNA, the brand is on a mission to create millions of happy, independent learners for life.
Founder and CEO Aanand Srinivas said, “When I was in the US, I saw that while I could solve a physics problem faster than anyone else out there, no one had ever prepared me in my life for a question like, “If you had $15M dollars and 2 years time, what ambitious problem will you work on?”. That’s when I realised our education system trains us from a young age just to be obedient executors of other people’s ideas, not to come up with our own original ideas. I started StayQrious with the vision of using school subjects as a means to teach our next generation the skills and attitudes that will make them ambitious innovators rather than obedient executors.”
“We enable leaders and innovators of tomorrow with skills and attitudes that schools don’t teach and exams never test. With our new methodology of social learning guided by a motivating ‘learning coach’, children are learning subjects as if they are playing a team sport and are enjoying the process of learning like never before,” said Founder and CEO Aanand Srinivas.
The StayQrious learning environment is designed by dedicated ‘Learning Engineers’ and is based on principles of cognitive science and behavioural economics. With a 1 to 6 ratio that mimics a real world meeting room, students are taught essential 21st century knowledge, skills, and mindsets. With the world moving towards digitization, StayQrious will also make students future-ready by teaching them coding for the new world.
“StayQrious is an all-star team led by CEO Aanand who helped build BYJU’s and Khan Academy India right from the early days. Now, by incorporating social learning and live coaches, StayQrious is set to bring about a 10x more effective and engaging way to learn any subject in India,” said Daniel Sanhyoon Kim, early stage investor at Draper Associates.
Commenting on the investment, Nitin Sharma, angel investor (First Principles VC), added, “We were blown away by the StayQrious team’s passion for the world’s highest quality content and pedagogy, which is also reflected in the following they have earlier built among millions of students. I believe their unique approach to social learning will provide students (and parents) the best experience in strengthening STEM foundations.”
