ED-TECH STARTUP LEAD SCHOOL, INTEGRATING ONLINE AND OFFLINE SCHOOLING SEAMLESSLY RAISES $30M.

Amidst the pandemic, the chinks in the armour of the traditional educational system were exposed. The major challenges being 1:50 or 1:40 teacher-student ratio, linear learning model via an end-of-term examination, different pace of learning of students, and the lack of requisite skills in teachers. Over the last decade, India has witnessed a large influx of technological innovations in the field of education. LEAD School building an integrated system aims to revolutionize the learning experience for every child, while empowering all the stakeholders involved, i.e. teachers, parents, principals, and school owners. The integrated system comes with an application, where the teachers can access various learning resources and methods to improve efficiency, such as visual, auditory and kinesthetic. With 2000+ schools onboard, this integrated technology system enables the principals/ academic coordinators to review the performance of the teachers, as well as allowing the parents to track the progress of their children on a real-time basis via the parents app. Bringing personalization and innovation to the education system, LEAD School enables quality learning from home efficient, battling the pandemic. 

Founded in 2012, Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah created the perfect synergy between curriculum, technology and pedagogy and provides schools with books, workbooks, smart classes, teacher training, teacher manuals, ERPs, or Math-Science kits. The Mumbai-based startup has recently raised $30-million in its Series D funding round led by GSV Ventures and existing investor WestBridge Capital. The Indian start-up plans to utilize these funds towards accelerating the company’s growth, introduce new products, make strategic acquisitions, and hire talented professionals across domains. Witnessing a 3X growth in 2020, LEAD Schools has catered over 2000 schools with around 8 lakh students enrolled,  the company recorded a 4.5X increase in its operating revenue to Rs 28.61 crore during the completion of the financial year on March 31, 2020. Priorly, in a Series C funding round, it secured Rs. 186.26 crore led by WestBridge Capital with an investment of Rs. 184.42 crore directly, while Rs 1.67 crore and Rs 17.5 lakh from Konark Trust and MMPL Trust respectively, with a stake of 16.34% in the company. While remaining the largest stakeholder, Elevar equity will hold nearly 42% in the company, diluting the founders stake to 41.6%. Acquiring QuizNext, a gamified student assessment platform in December, 2020, LEAD Schools intends to integrate the acquiree’s artificial intelligence-based features to improve the educational institutes’ assessment needs, while also providing the students with gamified elements and personalised recommendations.

GSV Ventures is a specialised EdTech fund that backs innovation-oriented education companies. Being a female-led, multi-stage venture capital firm focused on the $7+ trillion education sector, it manages over $400 million in global edtech investments through its GSV Funds I and II, and its GSV Special Purpose Vehicles. Their portfolio holdings include Andela, Class Technologies, ClassDojo, Coursera, Coursehero, Degreed, Guild, MasterClass, Outlier, Remind and Photomath among others. In a statement by Co-Founder and CEO, Sumeet, he said, “If all 260 million students have access to quality learning, there is no stopping the country from moving forward. That’s a dream with which we have been working with schools to complement the LEAD School integrated system.”