OnlineTyari raises Rs. 15 crore from Michael and Susan Dell Foundation

The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation today announced an equity investment of Rs. 15 crore (USD 2.1 million) in the mobile-first test preparation platform, OnlineTyari (OT).

The foundation is the lead investor in OT's current round of funding that has raised Rs. 20 crore.

OT offers a mobile application that allows highly customized, curated and vernacular test preparation content delivered through very low internet bandwidths. It offers a full suite of solutions, including entrance tests for public sector units, government jobs and higher education institutes. The comprehensive preparation materials include full mock tests, current affairs articles and other study material on a platform where candidates can practice, benchmark their performance and improve.

Since its launch, OT has become one of the fastest growing edtech platforms today-growing ten times in the past 12 months in terms of the average time spent by users on the platform every month, while recording nearly 3.5 million downloads and over 400,000 daily active users.

This investment from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation will help OT expand its vernacular offering, widen exam coverage and strengthen its technology and analytics engine.

OnlineTyari was founded in 2014 by Vipin Agarwal and Bhola Ram Meena, both graduates of IIT Kanpur. They have extensive technology and startup experience and have worked in an advisory role with the Government of India on the Digital India initiative.

"India is witnessing a paradigm shift toward online educational services. We are proud to be at the center of this and excited to partner with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation as we move into the next phase of our growth. This partnership will help us introduce new business best practices and to achieve the scale needed to reach our goal: improving education and skill development for more than 100 million people every year across India," said Co-Founder and CEO Online Tyari, Vipin Agarwal.

"The market for government and public sector entrance exams is huge with more than 20 million aspirants every year. These exams are very different from top-end engineering college entrance exams, and we have customized our solution for this large, yet unique target segment. We believe our market advantage comes from the learning's that can be generated by the sheer number of users on our platform," said Founder and CTO OnlineTyari, Bhola Ram Meena.

"OT has already disrupted the market for test prep in India by creating a personalized, data-backed solution for a large but often ignored market segment. The platform approach that curates content from multiple partners enables them to provide high quality exam content with a very short time-to-market. This is very important for this market segment as students may appear for multiple exams and need a one-stop solution. OT will play a huge role in helping students from smaller towns and low-income family's access test prep services," said Education Director India, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Prachi Windlass.