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Bengaluru-based edtech startup Tekie, on Monday announced that it has raised $1.5 million in seed round co-led by Silicon Valley-based GSV Ventures and Multiply Ventures, an early-to-growth stage fund by former ecommerce executives from Myntra, Paytm, Flipkart, and Alibaba. Better Capital has also participated in the round.

According to the official statement, the startup plans to utilize the funds to scale its operation to support the increasing demand and build a strong team to unlock the next level of growth.

Speaking about 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. Our animated series, live projects, and gamified learning journey make the course an immersive experience and the students look forward to their sessions.”

Founded in 2017 by IIT Delhi graduate Naman Mukund and SRCC alumnus Anand Verma, Tekie is a live coding platform that brings the art of storytelling to make learning a movie-like experience. The edtech startup has created the world’s first animated series on coding to teach text-based coding to kids.

Further adding, Naman Mukund said, “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,”

“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.”

The startup claims to have over 12,000 students learning on its platform. They have recently launched their B2B offering where they partner with schools to enable coding in their curriculum.

The edtech platform is also planning to expand its offerings in other markets like the US, Canada, and the UK after successfully establishing a presence in India.

Commenting on the investment, Mujtaba Wani from GSV Ventures stated,

“We were impressed by the founding team’s “product first” approach to delivering online coding lessons that has resulted in high customer loyalty and learning impact. Tekie’s best-in-class NPS of 85 affirms that students are realising value from the distinctive platform. GSV is honoured to be backing Anand and Naman on their founding journey.” 

This is the first seed investment in India by GSV, a female-led, multi-stage venture capital firm focused on the $7+ trillion education technology sector across “Pre-K to Gray” whose portfolio companies include Coursera, which recently went public, Masterclass, and Outlier.

“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 and Naman to take this offering to as many school-going students as possible,” added Raveen Sastry, Founder of Multiply Ventures and ex-Co-founder of Myntra.