Lok Capital, Chennai Angels invest Rs 5.7 crore in Everest Edusys

BANGALORE: Venture fund Lok Capital is backing an education startup that is creating content aimed at helping children move from learning by rote to learning by experience. Lok along with the investor group Chennai Angels will put in Rs 5.7 crore in Everest Edusys that primarily builds tools for science education. “We are moving education away from chalk and talk sessions to learning at mobile science centres and laboratories,” said Krishna Srinivasan, 43, cofounder of Everest whose company will use the funding to set up science laboratories in schools across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.

“Students learn concepts such as force, motion, gravity through touch and feel and activity based tools,” he said. A serial entrepreneur, Srinivasan cofounded Everest in 2011 along with his wife Chokanath Hymavathy after returning from the United States, where he had founded knowledge process outsourcing firm ISGN and services firm Neptune Technologies.

Everest, which works closely with teachers and schools, has developed a range of tools that have been used at by over 20,000 children in 100 schools so far. About a fifth of these schools are government-run, a category that Everest hopes to focus more on by establishing science centres that will act as a node for a cluster of government schools.

Srinivasan said an analysis done by Government of Tamil Nadu on children who were taught using their model showed a 47 per cent improvement in performance between two terms this year. “The investment will enable us to provide access to science labs to all children, irrespective of their families’ income levels.” Experts said Indian students exhibit the poorest learning outcomes for science and mathematics, signalling a need for intervention to address this. “The pressure on the education system to cater to all children in the world’s second most populous country is not making it easy for schools and educators,” said Venky Natarajan, managing partner, Lok Advisory Services.

Globally startups focusing on education services and tools are disrupting established markets and attracting the interest of investors. AltSchool, a collaborative community of micro-schools that uses teachers, research, and innovative tools to offer a personalised learning experience to children this month raised $33 million in a round led by Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. “There is a compelling need to arouse curiosity and critical thinking among young school going boys and girls and provide contemporary science and math education,” said Sameer Mehta, an investor at The Chennai Angels.