Education company, InOpen has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Benesse Holdings, an investment fund owned by a Japanese education major, Benesse Corporation for a minority stake in the company. The report states that InOpen and Benesse intend to jointly develop education products for the global market starting with Japan and USA. The company intends to raise further capital from financial investors to cater to domestic and international markets and is in talks with financial and impact funds for the same. The company plans to reach 1 million users in 2014. Founded in 2009, InOpen is currently incubated at IIT Bombay. The company had previously raised a seed funding of $500,000 from VenturEast for a minority stake in the company. The company claims to provide educational content in 2 subjects and 10 languages with over 4000 teachers catering to 5 lakh students including those in government schools, apart from downloads in over 130 countries. The company has two products namely Computer Masti, a computer science learning solution and Small Science, a set of primary schools science text books. Other education initiatives & companies: Datawind, the maker of Aakash tablet, had tied up with TES India, an online teaching community,to preload educational content to its tablets. The Human Resource Development ministry had launched a new initiative called National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER). Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had partnered with five international and national publishers to provide students with online resources for English, science, social sciences and mathematics including over 4500 animated content, 80 hours…
