EduPristine, a Mumbai-based online certification courses provider has raised $10 million in funding from private equity fund Kaizen Management Advisors, and education company DeVry Inc, reports Livemint. This round also sees the exit of Accel Partners who had previously invested $1.5 million in the company in 2014, added the report. MediaNama has written to the company seeking a statement, and will update this when we hear back.
With the fresh funds in place, EduPristine looks to add more courses in big data analytics, launch courses in the healthcare category and expand to 15 cities in India. Currently it offers 15 types of certification-level courses in categories like finance, accounting, digital marketing, business analytics & big data, risk management, among others.
Courses taught through classrooms
The company also claims to offer classroom training for a select number of courses, which will be taught by industry experts. However, it does not mention where or how it conducts these offline classes. It also offers web-seminars, and other online one-to-one learning sessions. It currently has operations outside India offering online courses in U.S, Africa, and other Asian countries as well.
In 2015, the company claimed to have enrolled more than 15,000 students for courses costing $600 on an average. All courses have a duration of anywhere between two months to one-and-a-half years.
Other developments in education sector
-Last week, NIIT, a management and training solutions company had partnered with edX, an online learning platform to introduce Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) module in both their platforms.
-In April, Gurgaon based CollegeDekho, an online platform which lists colleges across streams in the country and offers test preparation material, had raised $2 million in funding from Man Capital.
-In the same month, Finland based edtech startup Claned raised $1.46 million in a round of funding led by Indian CBA (Cross Border Angels and Investors) members.
-In March, Bangalore-based education tech startup Byju’s Learning raised $75 million from Sequoia Capital and Sofina.
– In January, Amazon India launched Exam Central, under the books department on the website where users can get access to sample question papers, solved papers and articles from academicians for entrance exams.
-In the same month, McGraw Hill Education India (MHE) tied up with Edutor Technologies’ IGNITOR, which provides tablets with educational content, to provide MHE’s Education book catalog in a digital format and distribute across universities and colleges.
-In December 2015 Jigsaw Academy, a portal for data analytics courses, raised $3 million in a series A round of funding from Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE),
-In November 2015 S Chand, the publisher of textbooks and competitive exam material, raised $27 million (Rs 179.2 crore) led by International Finance Corp (Rs 110 crore) and others.
-In the same month, online open course provider Udacity raised $105 million in Series D round of funding led by German media group Bertelsmann and other investors
-In October 2015, Smartivity Labs, a startup which uses augmented reality and robotics for learning, raised $200,000 in seed funding from book publisher S Chand.
-In the same month, Schoolguru, an e-learning company that lets universities launch, run and manage online programs raised $3 million in Series A funding from unnamed HNIs.
Image credit: Flickr user Ginny under CC BY-SA 2.0
