88academics raises $3 mn in pre-series A round led by Aarin Capital

Online education provider 88academics has secured equity financing of about $3 million in a pre-Series A round led by Aarin Capital Partners, founded by Mohandas Pai and Ranjan Pai. 88academics (India), an 88tuition (Singapore) group company, will use the funds to develop India specific content for the K-12 segment.

A group of successful professionals, including Piyush Gupta (CEO, DBS Group), Vinod Gupta (MD, VG Learning Destination and Rashtriya Gaurav Awardee), P S Jayakumar (ex-MD & CEO, Bank of Baroda), Ramesh Swaminathan (Group CFO, Lupin), Ajay Abrol (ex-Head Proprietary Trading, Nomura Singapore), Prem Rajani (Managing Partner, Rajani Associates), Akshay Gupta and N Jayakumar (Management Team, Prime Securities) also participated in the round.

Anil Ahuja, founder and CEO of 88tuition, said, “We are honoured to welcome Aarin and other high-quality investors into our family. Our objective is to democratise education and make the highest quality product available to everyone at an affordable price.”

Prime Securities Limited was the exclusive Investment Banker to this transaction.

88tuition is one of Singapore’s fastest growing edtech companies and is focused on delivering learning outcomes using a proprietary pedagogy and technology platform. Proprietary pedagogy, teachers and attractive pricing have helped 88tuition capture over 6% and 2% (registered users and paid customers respectively) of the highly competitive Singapore market, said the company.

"We seek to partner technology-intensive businesses in life-sciences & healthcare, education and other potentially large India-centric or India-first companies. 88academics provides us with an opportunity to invest in a sector we know well and back a highly experienced management team with a differentiated product and a disruptive business model," said T V Mohandas Pai, partner at Aarin Capital Partners.