Bengaluru-based ed-tech startup Tekie, on Monday, announced that it has raised $1.5 million in its seed funding round co-led by Silicon Valley-based GSV Ventures and Multiply Ventures, an early-to-growth stage fund by former e-commerce executives from Myntra, Paytm, Flipkart, and Alibaba. Better Capital also participated in the fundraising.
Tekie to use the proceeds for expanding their product offerings and exploring new revenue models. They recently launched their B2B offering by partnering with some schools to introduce coding in their curriculum. As per NEP2020 coding has to be introduced as a subject from class 6 onwards as part of 21st-century skills.
Commenting on the platform Anand Verma, Co-Founder, Tekie , said, “As a first-generation learner, I have seen the transformational impact of education first hand. When we started four years back, our goal was to build a product with a focus on three pillars — put learning outcomes at the forefront, make learning an enjoyable experience, and provide the best teachers to learners. “ He emphasized that their animated series, live projects, and gamified learning journey excite the students to eagerly wait for their sessions.”
IIT Delhi graduate Naman Mukund and SRCC alumnus Anand Verma, Founded Tekie in 2017. It is a live coding platform that enables studies to have a movie-like experience. The ed-tech startup pedagogy works on storytelling. It has created the world’s first animated series on coding to teach text-based coding to kids. In a shorter span, the startup has over 12,000 students enrolled on its platform.
Co-Founder of Tekie, Naman Mukund, said, “Coding is not only an essential skill for the future but an effective way to build problem-solving and logical thinking among kids. Coding education is still at a nascent stage in our country, primarily restricted to block-based coding. We want students to go beyond just getting introduced to concepts and learn to write real code. Keeping this in mind, we designed our course to teach text-based coding.”
“Having grown up in a digital-first world, the learning habits of students have evolved and the education system needs to keep up with the changing trends. Coding is not only an essential skill for the future but an effective way to build problem-solving and logical thinking among kids,” Mukund added.
In India, It is the first seed investment by GSV, a female-led, multi-stage venture capital firm whose portfolio includes companies like Coursera, Masterclass, and Outlier.
Raveen Sastry, Founder of Multiply Ventures and ex-co-founder of Myntra, said, “Tekie’s unique value proposition and student-centric approach to teaching live coding via a storytelling format is visible in the learning outcome and fits perfectly well into our investment Thesis for EdTech. Their high NPS scores and retention numbers are a reflection of product-market fit. We are thrilled to partner with Anand & Naman to take this offering to as many school-going students as possible.”
Vaibhav Domkundwar, founder and CEO of Better Capital, said, “Education and the learning process has become multi-dimensional over the last couple of years. Tekie has an innovative and distinct approach focussed on learning outcomes and class experience and we support their vision of empowering the next generation with future-ready skills. We are glad to be a partner in their growth journey.”