Extramarks to raise $5mn VC fund

Extramarks.com, an online education model that offers 'after-school' academic support to students, plans to raise $5-million (around Rs 20 crore) venture capital fund to fuel its growth plans.

Promoted by Noida-based international BPO company Cleaveglobal E-Services Limited, the portal is in talks with three venture capital firms and is expected to close a deal soon.

According to Atul Kulshrestha, founder-director and chairman of Cleaveglobal, the company intends to utilise these funds to invest in enhancing the existing infrastructure and launching the model in the UK and US in the next six months, besides introducing syllabus for higher education including engineering and curricula of state educational boards.

"Our idea is to create a networked community between students, teachers and parents. Students can communicate and interact with their peers across the country, ask questions and answer among themselves, and can even interact with teachers for realtime subject expert guidance," he said.

Extramarks is aimed at students of classes VI to XII on the NCERT syllabus. Currently on the beta, it has so far received 5,000 free registrations, and has 40 teachers on its rolls for offering expert guidance services. It has created a database of class-wise, subject-wise and chapter-wise content, which includes over 50,000 questions and answers. The portal will be launched in India in the next 15 days.

The company will be completing an investment of Rs 5 crore in the next six months, which will be met out of internal accruals for incorporating 'whiteboard' and 'podcast feed' technologies and additional content.

Whiteboard is a technology wherein a teacher writes on a virtual board, which can be seen by the students on their personal computer. A podcast is a digital media file that is distributed over the internet for playback on portable media players and personal computers.

"While the peer-to-peer network and online tests service comes for free, the target price for expert guidance, whiteboard and podcast services has been fixed at Rs 1,200 per year," Kulshrestha said.

Seven-year-old Cleaveglobal E-Services, which posted a turnover of $1.5 million (Rs 6 crore) last year, expects to touch $3 million (Rs 12 crore) this year. It eyes revenues of Rs 10 crore from Extramarks during 2008-09.