Edtech Venture, Toprankers Raises $4M in Series A funding
Bootstrapped Edtech venture, Toprankers.com – India’s largest platform for careers beyond engineering and medical, has raised $4M in Series A funding from leading consumer fund, Sixth Sense Ventures.
Within India’s ed-tech sector, the $12B online test-prep space is the fastest growing at a 38% CAGR, set to quadruple to $4B by 2025 with over 5M+ paid users. While this space has historically been driven by engineering (JEE), and medical (NEET), engineering has ironically witnessed a 10-year low in student enrolment seats, signaling a clear shift in careers. The students of modern India are looking for careers beyond engineering and medicine.
Commenting on the funds raised Gaurav Goel, CEO of Toprankers, said, “Over 15 million students appear for Grade 12 every year, with roughly 10% of them sitting for engineering and medical. The remaining 90% are unclear about their career choices, we want to help this segment in making a clear choice about their career and offer them the right preparation courses for a brighter future. We have brands which serve unique career opportunities, and we’ll continue to add more brands serving a larger pool of students across verticals.”
Toprankers participate in these whitespaces, tapping into careers beyond engineering and medical, focusing on undergraduate and postgraduate programs streams in:
- Law – CLAT, AILET, LLM (LegalEdge)
- Judiciary services – State exams (Judiciary Gold)
- Management – CUET, IPM (SuperGrads)
- Design, fashion, and architecture – NATA, NID, UCEED (Creative Edge)
Nikhil Vora, Founder, and CEO, of Sixth Sense Ventures, further added, “online test-prep is a high growth opportunity fuelled by increasing competitiveness and migration from offline to online/hybrid. Millennials and Gen Z are aspiring for careers, beyond engineering and medical, presenting large whitespaces with almost no presence of incumbents. Gaurav, Karan, and Harsh are seasoned ed-tech founders, who understand nuances to make a student’s career journey successful.
Look forward to partnering with Toprankers as it establishes itself as India’s largest platform for new-age careers for the students of tomorrow.”
Founded by serial entrepreneurs, Gaurav Goel, Karan Mehta, and Harsh Gagrani, Toprankers has enabled over 2 lakh students to kickstart their careers and aims to build careers for a Million students over the next 3 years. Toprankers has already garnered a dominant share in law, with LegalEdge amassing 70% of the ranks across national law exams, while Judiciary Gold is replicating this success across state judiciary exams. The company’s new initiatives SuperGrads and Creative edge have also embarked on a similar journey by producing top AIR’s in management and design exams.
Along with test prep, Toprankers helps students with career discovery, job prep, study abroad, etc. Clear focus to be a full-stack career company. The recently announced CUET (Common Universities Entrance Test) – a mandatory exam for admissions across the majority of national universities with 15L aspirants, presents a large opportunity for the company.
“CUET will potentially create a huge test-prep vertical. Being one of the first movers with an active product enables Toprankers to capitalize on this opportunity. Excited to partner with Toprankers in their journey to become one of the largest full-stack career companies”, said Nimisha Nagarsekar, Investment Partner, Sixth Sense Ventures, who will be joining the board of the company.
Felix-ETR is the banker for the transaction.