College admissions and education services platform CollegeDekho has raised $26.5 million (Rs 200 Crore) in an ongoing (and oversubscribed) series B funding round.
The round was led by Winter Capital Partners, ETS Strategic Capital – the private equity investments arm of ETS, Calega and existing investor Man Capital and Rajeev Chaba. The company had last raised $8 million in May 2019.
With this funding round, the company plans to improve its offerings for students and colleges, increase its investment in product & technology, expand internationally and grow new verticals like Ed-Fin-Tech and Student Accommodation.
CollegeDekho’s Ed-Tech platform helps connect prospective students with colleges using its proprietary Technology and its AI based conversation bot. CollegeDekho owns India’s largest Common Application Form (CAF) platform which enables a student to apply to multiple colleges with a single click.
For Study Abroad students, CollegeDekho offers a full range of services from Profile Building, Test Preparation, to Application Assistance, University Selection and Visa Assistance. CollegeDekho has recently launched innovative 0% EMI based education financing and insurance products to enable more and more students to get access to an education of their choice. The platform helps colleges by making their admissions more efficient and predictable.
CollegeDekho Founder and CEO Ruchir Arora said, “CollegeDekho is at an exciting phase of growth in its mission to connect students and colleges across geographies. The tremendous response we are seeing from students, parents and colleges continues to energise us to build world class products and services for them.”
“With this fund raise, we plan to invest in making our products and services even more lovable for our students and colleges, as well as expand into new geographies and business verticals,” he added.
Winter Capital Advisors Managing Director Anton Farlenkov said, “We are excited to be making a debut in India with an investment in CollegeDekho – one of the fastest-growing education service providers in India, with an exceptional traffic, currently estimated at 1.5 million visits per month.”
“India has about 52,000 colleges, of which around 66 percent are private educational institutions. We believe that India’s Ed-Tech industry is poised to reach $10 billion in size in the next 5-10 years, compared to the current market size of about $2.5 billion. We see this investment as promising and well aligned with our strategy to expand our investment portfolio via dynamic, high-quality assets,” he added.
This Series B funding round has been advised by IBIS Capital, a specialist investment and corporate finance advisory group focused on the global media & education and by Cilix Capital, an international investment banking firm that helps companies as well as institutional investors with fundraises and M&A.