FrontRow Raises $14 Mn Series A Round Led By Eight Roads Ventures And GSV The company plans to use the funds to scale to more than 10 categories and over 300 courses over the next year
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Learning platform for non-academic skills FrontRow announced that it raised $14 million led by Eight Roads Ventures and GSV, with participation from existing investors Lightspeed and Elevation Capital. The round also saw participation from angels such as Vishal Dhadlani, Raftaar, Kunal Shah, Gaurav Munjal, Farid Ahsan, and multiple leaders across the startup and entertainment world.
The company plans to use the funds to scale to more than 10 categories and over 300 courses over the next year.
"We launched Front Row with a simple core belief - pursuing your passion is a fundamental human need. Our goal is to help you learn in the best way possible, across categories and mediums. The next decade will see new paradigms of learning, built online first, and better than offline! For this, we're building a new model of community and cohort-led learning that is a fundamental evolution of edtech," said Ishaan Singh, co-founder, FrontRow while stating that they'll be investing heavily on team and product.
"Over70 per cent of learning is actually outside the classroom and that's the part that hasn't been solved yet. We enable people to learn from the best, and the small cohorts and community create a learning experience miles ahead of anything out there. In fact, we see over 100,000 users learn through our communities every month," shared Mikhil Raj, co-founder, FrontRow.
FrontRow, founded by Shubhadit Sharma, Mikhil Raj, and Ishaan Preet Singh, launched just 9 months ago and has scaled to more than 50,000 paid learners across 2000 cities worldwide, with users spending over a million hours learning on FrontRow. They had earlier raised a $3.2 million Seed round led by Lightspeed, Elevation, and Deepika Padukone's Family Office.
"Edtech is something I'm passionate about, both as a musician who appreciates the wider access it provides to real and useful knowledge and content, as well as an investor who sees the strength of the business model. Above all else, of everything one sees out there, Frontrow is clearly the best online platform to learn and practice music. That alone is enough reason for me to want to be a part of it," commented Vishal Dhadlani, musician.
FrontRow offers a complete learning experience, for pursuers of passion, with flagship courses taught by industry stalwarts such as Amit Trivedi, Neha Kakkar, DIVINE, Suresh Raina, and over 100 live courses taught by influencers and experts for learners to go deeper in their field.
"As investors, we've been a big champion of the role technology will play in disrupting multiple sectors, including education. We believe the market is highly under-served with strong secular trends in digital adoption of non-academic learning driven by the limited availability of qualified instructors, flexibility in scheduling, and lack of access to the structured curriculum. Ishaan, Mikhil Shubhadit, and the team at FrontRow have taken the "pursuit of passion' digital, at a time when few others have in India. We are very excited to back one of the market-leading companies focused on non-academic learning," mentioned Aditya Systla, partner, Eight Roads Ventures.
"FrontRow is the pioneer of the passion economy in India, powering skills, knowledge, and giving life to the aspirations of potentially hundreds of millions of students across the country from all walks of life. We're proud to have partnered with the Front row team since their inception and are excited about the next phase of execution of the FrontRow vision this round unlocks," noted Akshay Bhushan, partner, Lightspeed.
"Frontrow has uncovered a unique approach to go after its mission of enabling Indians to learn and follow their passion. As Day 0 investors in the company, we have been amazed to see the response and love for the product, and the way in which the team has iterated to make this happen. This makes us super excited to extend our commitment in this round," added Chirag Chadha, vice president, Elevation Capital.
