Founded by 2 IIT graduates.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Toppr.com, a Mumbai-based startup that helps students prepare for entrance exams, has raised $10 million from Fidelity Growth Partners India, SAIF Partners, and Helion Ventures.
Founded in 2013 by two IIT-Bombay graduates, Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti, Toppr.com helps students study for entrance exams to engineering and medical schools, including the Indian Institutes of Technology (public universities that are considered the most prestigious engineering colleges in India), according to TechCrunch.
Hayath told TechCrunch says many schools do not offer adequate preparation for students that want to move on to higher education, which means they have to rely on private coaching.
Toppr.com intends to make test prep affordable for as many students as possible. The company claims it already has 170,000 students registered on its platform and hopes to grow that number to five million by 2017.
According to The Times of India, Toppr largely concentrates on engineering and medical entrances exam preparation tools, which are the two most lucrative streams for the brick-and-mortar coaching institutes as well.
Toppr.com’s platform is meant to supplement offline tutoring. It uses “adaptive learning technology to customize teaching materials to each student’s needs and prepare them to cope with the demands of an entrance exam.”
“India being the youngest country has the highest number of students enrolled in schools than any country in the world. Over 300 million students are studying in various schools across India, which is more than the entire population of the U.S. The current educational system is extremely inefficient and the only way to take a leap is through extensive use of technology,” Hayath explained to TechCrunch.