Egurucool Seeks Second Round Of Funding
The website for education and careers, www.egurucool.com, is in talks with various venture capital funds and institutions for a second round of equity placement. The company recently got Rs 10 crore from Chrysalis Capital.
"We are talking to various funding organisations. We are yet to finalise the second funding institution we are going to partner with," said Vivek Agrawal, managing director and co-founder of Learning Universe Ltd, the company which launched the site. He said that the partnership will be through equity.
In addition to this, the company also plans an initial public offering (IPO) in the near future. However, Agarwal did not spell out the exact time from for the IPO.
Outlining the plans of the company, Agrawal also said the company would spend Rs 7 crore on promotion and development of the site this year. The company has already tied up with 25 schools and with Lakhotia Computer Center to enable students to have wider access to the site. It plans to link with 100 schools soon.
Elaborating on future plans, Agarwal said, "Our plan is to be a predominant education site in the country in an attempt to link-up every student in the country."
Agarwal said his company is talking to a number of schools to link up students in order to reduce their constraints of time and space. "For example, we have a project with Delhi Public School, R K Puram, New Delhi, for on-line homework where we put things like weekly classnotes on our site, egurucool.com. We will also be starting from February 15 for six weeks a 24-hour helpline on subjects like economics and accounting."
Besides, the company is also learnt to be in talks with various US universities to create content for its distance education plans. "We are negotiating with various US Universities and will offer online education programme in India," Agrawal said.
Agarwal claimed that the site is getting about a million hits every month which he expects will go up substantially after expansion programs. Earlier, the company issued 3,20,000 equity shares of Rs 10 each to Chrysalis Capital at Rs 156 per share (inclusive of premium) on repatriation basis. The total FDI will amount to Rs 5 crore and will be done through Chrysalis' Mauritius-registered outfit.