Braingroom, a multilingual online learning platform focussed on students from lower and middle-income families, has raised Rs 1.5 crore from IAN, Social Alpha, and Startup Oasis.
The Chennai-based startup will use the funding to develop new courses and content in different languages and new product features. The company is also eyeing market expansion with a vision to train one million rural students and make them job-ready in the coming three years.
Three engineering graduates, Madhula Sathyamoorthy, Naliene Ramasamy, and Kalaiarsi Periasamy identified the need to develop impactful edtech solutions that can bridge the employability gap between urban and rural youth. This prompted them to launch Braingroom in 2017. Through this multilingual online learning platform, the co-founders aspire to create high-impact technical tools to facilitate quality learning outcomes for everyone.
Braingroom follows a hands-on learning approach with a focus on application-oriented learning. It uses AI chatbots and gamification to create a personalised learning experience.
The startup partners with various expert training providers across the globe and provides customised online learning solutions for both B2C and B2B markets with a multilingual flavour.
Madhula Satyamoorthy, Co-founder of Braingroom, said,
“Through Braingroom, we are creating high-quality technical and skill training with the right combination of vernacular content, bots, and gamifications. These will help us make learning more hands-on, interactive, personalised, and engaging for millions of students from Tier-II and Tier-III cities, and most importantly for those from middle and lower-income families. In the next three years, we are aiming to train one million rural students and make them job-ready.”
So far, the startup claims to have trained around 35,000 students across India. It also works with various CSR teams and NGOs to train rural students across the nation.
Pradeep K Jaisingh, Lead Investor at IAN, added,
“Around 100 million students from middle- and lower-income families, especially from Tier-II and Tier-III cities are seeking upskilling and cross-skilling opportunities. Braingroom is the new-age multilingual platform to make online learning more affordable and accessible for students from all backgrounds.”
According to Manoj Kumar, Founder and CEO of Social Alpha, “Braingroom’s model of integrating new-age technology into learning and skilling to uplift a student’s career trajectory and making them job-ready is the need of the hour as we see a huge number of youngsters entering the workforce in the coming years.’’
Going forward, the startup is planning to build end-to-end training solutions for its B2B partners. Braingroom will add more components to the application-oriented learning approach for students and develop women-focussed micro-entrepreneurship courses.