CuriousJr Raises $1 Mn Seed Funding From WaterBridge Ventures, Enzia Ventures And Angel Investors The company will utilize these funds to further refine the product and create an engaging learning ecosystem for the students
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Online coding platform for kids CuriousJr on Tuesday announced to have raised $1million in its Seed funding round. The round was led by WaterBridge Ventures, alongside EnziaVentures, and angel investors. Participating angel investors include Aditya Shankar(Doubtnut), Tanushree Nagori (Doubtnut), Abhinav Sinha (OYO), MohdWassem (EasyEat), and Shashank Shekhar (ShareChat).
The company will utilize these funds to further refine the product and create an engaging learning ecosystem for the students. Along with this, they will also focus on community development, expanding their team, and creating more appealing and engaging content for their users.
"We started CuriousJr to make coding education accessible to everyone, but then we realized that 88 per cent of the K-12 users in India do not have access to aPC/laptop. That's why we focused on building India's first mobile-based code learning platform for K12 in vernacular languages. We believe that learning in one's mother tongue empowers young students to think and harness their coding skills more effectively to become excellent coders for tomorrow," said Mridul Ranjan Sahu, co-founder, CuriousJr.
"More than 60 per cent of new jobs will require tech skills, and no traditional education system can serve this scale. CuriousJr is the solution," shared Amit Shekhar, co-founder, CuriousJr.
"Kids have created more than 75,000 apps and games on CuriousJr, and We look forward to taking this to 1 million within the next 1year," commented Janishar Ali, co-founder, CuriousJr.
CuriousJr is co-founded by Amit Shekhar, Janishar Ali, and Mridul Ranjan Sahu. The online platform is mobile-first, focused on students between the ages of 8 and 17 years, and vernacular-based. The platform helps students learn coding with the help of bite-sized content, test their knowledge in a practice arena, and publish their creations on the CuriousJr app store, which they can then share with friends, family, and the larger community.
"Coding is quickly evolving into the de facto measure of student success in India. As tech continues to revolutionize the Indian experience, parents have shifted their focus from Maths/STEM subjects to Computer Science-focused expertise. We believe CuriousJr's mobile product innovation and gamified learning outcomes can democratize coding for millions of young coders across the country," stated Nilesh Balakrishnan, associate vice president, WaterBridge Ventures.
"In edtech, coding for kids is seeing great traction, especially with successes like WhiteHatJr, and the National Education Policy's recognition of coding as an important skill for kids to learn. CuriousJr is disruptive and its unique mobile-first learning experience is democratizing learning. The founders bring complementary expertise and are also self-taught exceptional coders. Less than a year old, CuriousJr is already demonstrating high traction and user engagement. At Enzia, we see a lot of promise in their vision and technique, and are excited to be partnering with them," added Namita Dalmia, partner, Enzia Ventures.
