The top startups building education solutions in India

India has one of the largest K-12 populations in the world, with more than 260 million children enrolled in more than a million schools scattered across the country’s states and territories.

While access to education has increased over the past few years, educational quality remains poor. A national survey last year found that fewer than half of Indian students are able to read a textbook designed for students three years younger than them. Meanwhile, only 35 percent of Class V students (10–11 years old) level could identify numbers from 10 to 99, while less than 20 percent could perform a simple task like division.

Our mission at Village Capital is to invest in entrepreneurs solving major social problems, and for the past few months we’ve been working with the Omidyar Network to find, train and invest in early-stage startups in the Indian education space.

We’re proud to announce the two newest companies to be peer-selected as the top startups in the our Education India 2017 program and receive offers of $50,000 in investment from Village Capital: Logic Roots and Project Mudra. The companies were selected through our unique model of peer-selected investment, which puts the final investment decision-making power in the hands of entrepreneurs.

Logic Roots designs social math games for K-5 students. The company, founded by Kunal Gandhi and Gunjan Agrawal, has seen a 26x jump in revenue since their seed round in 2016, has two of their products on the “Amazon Recommends” list, and is a recent recipient of the Academics Choice Award.

Project Mudra, operated by Thinkerbell Labs Pvt. Ltd., builds connected hardware that enables visually impaired students to read, write, and type in Braille with minimal teacher intervention. The company, founded by alumni from BITS Pilani, including Sanskriti Dawle, Aman Srivastava, and Dilip Ramesh, was part of MassChallenge UK and is working with the Royal National Institute of Blind People to digitize their standard unified English Braille content, applicable across all Commonwealth countries.

The complete list of startups that participated in the program were:

• 23.4 Degrees creates curriculum, assessments, and self-learning products for CBSE and ICSE schools.
• Callido Learning develops critical thinking and problem-solving skills in children through its evidence-based curriculum and innovative digital learning tools.
• Doubtnut is an on-demand math doubt-clearing app.
• Fundamentor is an online cognitive aptitude & life skill development program using gamification, technology, and analytics.
• Logic Roots designs social math games for K-5 students.
• Mindchamp develops logical thinking in children through coding education.
• MyPeegu is a platform that connects parents, teachers, and psychologists to monitor and improve the aptitude, attitude, and general well-being of children.
• Project Mudra builds connected hardware that enables visually impaired students to read, write, and type Braille with minimal teacher intervention.
• Stones2Milestones develops the will and skill to read in English for young children through scientifically designed and intuitive reading programs.
• Suraasa is redesigning teacher training through a mobile app and skilling program.
• The Climber helps students make more informed career choices by connecting them with young achievers from across the globe.
• Whiz Juniors is a gamified online tech learning platform that enables students to learn, practice, and get certified in multiple skills.
• XPrep provides a mobile-first platform for tutors to engage students & parents, manage post-classroom activities, and order educational content.