Lucknow-based EduGorilla Community, which operates an eponymous online test preparation platform for government jobs, has raised Rs 5.3 crore (approximately $726,000) as part of an extended seed round from early stage investment firm Auxano Trust.
Investors from angel networks SucSEED Venture Partners, TiE Pune Angels and Venture Garage participated in this round.
The capital raised will primarily be deployed in marketing and sales initiatives, Rohit Manglik, founder and CEO of EduGorilla, told TechCircle.
The company has raised a total of $1 million till date.
Founded by Manglik and Shashwat Vikram in 2016, EduGorilla began as an aggregator website of schools and coaching centres. After multiple pivots including lead selling and admission counselling, the startup zeroed in on test content for government jobs as its focus.
It launched the first test series in November 2018 and built a set of technology tools to reduce the turnaround time required to analyse demand and create and distribute content.
EduGorilla has built an artificial intelligence based demand and prediction algorithm to determine the operational profitability of notified exams. It works on two types of variables – a dynamic variable analysing key elements such as type of opening, number of vacancies, and under which state government and department.
The second variable analyses the trend parameters such as searches on Google, ecommerce portals and on its own portal for the content/book. Based on these variables, it decides on which exams to focus on.
The process then enters an automated workflow where the company is able to generate the test preparation content and mock tests for a particular exam in just 48 hours.
The software also automatically converts the test content to a book format, which can be ordered on ecommerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart. Whenever it gets a request for a physical book, the startup gets it printed in two hours and ships directly to students.
EduGorilla primarily focuses on state-level government examinations such as Karnataka State Police, Punjab Public Service Commission, and Telangana State Cooperative Apex Bank examinations.
The platform currently has about 1,300 competitive examinations and 40,000 tests across five languages such as English, Kannada, Gujarati, Hindi and Bengali.
It operates on a subscription model where students can take up monthly or yearly offerings in the price range of Rs 99-699. Over 90% of its revenue is generated from state government exams and over 95% of revenue comes from its online sales.
The company has 70,000 daily active users. With the fresh capital, it wants to reach 6-7 lakh users daily, create content for 3,000 exams and build content in nine languages. EduGorilla also plans to get into doubt solving for students.
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