Separator

AdmitKard Raises Rs 50 Cr In Series A

Separator
AdmitKard, the startup for college admissions has raised Rs 50 crore ($6 million) in Series A funding, led by international edtech investor GSV Ventures. Famous angels like Kunal Shah of Cred and Varun Alagh of the direct-to-consumer unicorn Mameath joined the round along with a few other current angel investors. AdmitKard, a Noida-based company, serves the "study abroad" industry by assisting students with the application process for higher education at schools and institutions in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Piyush Bhartiya, co-founder, stated that "we are investing the profits in increasing our product offering in addition to admissions." The company aspires to "grow broader in terms of supporting the kids in financing their education, scholarships, enabling them to secure housing, and various other issues that they have while going through admissions." Bhartiya Agrawal and Rachit Agrawal launched AdmitKard together in 2016. Pineyards Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is the company that runs it. It provides a technologically based "course-to-career" admissions solution.

Also, it wants to diversify how it recruits students. At the moment, it receives applications for admission from students in more than 70 Indian cities via AdmitKard. "We are considering using several strategies to approach the market. More than 250 Indian cities are sending students abroad, he claimed. We are experimenting with different go-to-market techniques and trying to reach more people in these cities. The startup has a freemium business model, and all students have access to its core features. Additionally, he said, the corporation receives royalties from educational institutions for marketing and promotion.

There are now 200 people working for AdmitKard. During the following 12 to 18 months, "we'll be looking at tripling the team size," he continued. The fundraising effort takes place in the midst of a macroeconomic climate that has caused thousands of people in the edtech industry to lose their jobs in the past year. The largest businesses in the industry, such Byju's and Unacademy, have reduced their employment in an effort to preserve jobs.

Unicorn Unacademy said earlier this month that it will not provide staff with cash appraisals this year. In its second round of layoffs in four months, Byju's has let go of around 1,500 workers, including senior executives. Almost 1,000 employees have been let off by the corporation due to a liquidity crisis.

The climate has an effect on companies outside of the edtech industry. In a corporate reorganisation effort last week, digital entertainment platform Pocket Aces Pictures Pvt Ltd let go of 50 people, or around 20% of its personnel, adding its name to the lengthy list of Indian businesses that have been reducing headcount to slash costs. Among the other companies on the list are FarEye, Swiggy, OLX Group, and ShareChat.