Bengaluru | 9th September 2020: QShala, an online curiosity platform designed to foster life-skills & curiosity in children, has raised INR 2.7 Cr in angel funding. The round was led byZerodha-backed start-up incubator and fund, Rainmatter Capital, with participation from other notable angels including Mindtree co-founder Mr. Kalyan Banerjee.
Other investors and mentors include Ms. Preeti Sawhney (Former Director, Lowe Lintas), Mr. Sanjay Tambwekar (CTO, Qwikcilver), Mr. Suresh Kumar Pinglay (Former Vice President, Oracle, India), Mr. Chetan Vinchhi (India Head, Uptycs), Mr. Avinash Umapathy (Partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas), Ms. Akshita Ganesh (Product and Strategy Lead, Reforge), and Mr. Nikhil Bhandarkar (Co-founder, Ubiquity Capital).
As an outcome of the pandemic, the move to online learning presents a possibility to create a more effective method of educating students. Children today are digital age citizens, living in the Age of Information. But, with increased and easier access to information at our fingertips, there is little effort to dig deeper to explore the “how” and “why” behind the “what” of information. QShala programs help in overcoming this attitude. It equips children with a questioning mindset and life skills to stay “qurious”, confident and aware learners in an ever-changing world.
Mr. Raghav Chakravarthy, Co-founder, QShala, added, “We are indeed very delighted with the support we have received from Rainmatter Capital and other esteemed investors. These investments reinforce our belief in QShala’s curriculum, learning experience and the platform through which we address the need for developing skills and aptitudes in young minds.”
“On this point, we do meet the similar needs identified and called out in the just released National Education Policy, 2020. QShala is designed to address the latent curiosity quotient of every child. We are very privileged to have a very talented and eclectic team members that undertakes extensive research to create content for the QShala programs in fun induced formats like quizzes, focused sessions and interactive programs to help sharpen life skills. Our programs start with children from class 1 onwards and our goal is to expand our footprint to many more cities across the country and the world to cover children in the age groups of 8 to 16 years. The Quriosity Curriculum is designed to nurture and nourish their imagination and curiosity while focusing on learning that goes way beyond the school text book curriculum.”
He added, “we often wish we were taught a variety of skills when we were young or were in school. This sentiment is what led Sachin Ravi, my co-founder and I to build QShala. Our goal is to bridge this gap, at the right time and in the right way.”
Mr. Nithin Kamath, Founder & CEO, Zerodha, added “It is important for children to develop critical and lateral thinking from a young age much beyond their classroom framework in today’s world. We are rapidly moving towards subjective learning where they would need to build a skill set actually required for employability in the future. We have always been big believers in the philosophy of constant upskilling and retraining. Rainmatter is glad to partner with like-minded people who are focused on helping kids build these skill sets.”
QShala, which is owned by Walnut Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd., also conducts the QShala Family Quiz, India’s largest online family quiz on Sundays, which has seen over 8500+ families participate till date.
