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Indian Angel Network’s (IAN) today announced its investment in Nagpur-based RankJunction; a ranking platform for competitive exams.
IAN investor members Jay Chopde and Ravi Kiran led this round of investment in the start-up and will join the RankJunction board.
Sameer and Rashmi Gautam founded RankJunction in 2011 to create an innovative platform to take a ‘Live’ test which is a prescheduled online examination taken by thousands of users together. At the end of the test, students can see their All India Rank along with performance analysis and why they have ranked as they have.
The husband-wife team started with Medical PG Entrance Exam tests and have ambitious plans to expand into other domains like NEET UG, JEE Mains, CMAT,CTET, CSAT and Bank PO. Currently, RankJunction has 1,00,000 users from more than 1,000 locations registered for its various services.
With 15 million students appearing for various competitive exams in India every year, the size of the Indian market is estimated at Rs 5,000 crore and growing rapidly, is what Rank Junction is chasing.
“Considering the intensity of competition amongst the students today, there is a need of a platform like RankJunction which can help them work towards getting a higher rank, giving them an absolute evaluation of their preparations. In Sameer and Rashmi, we found a brilliant team, with the passion they have for the venture,” said Jay Chopde, an IAN member, who is joining the RankJunction board.
While talking about the investment, Sameer Gautam, co-founder and CEO, RankJunction said, “The investment raised will be primarily used for strengthening product development. It will also help to scale up the business by launch of more paid tests, bringing more coaching classes on the portal, creating alternate distribution channels and additional new courses for the students.”
Indian Angel Network has over 225 members and has funded over 47 start-ups across multiple sectors like IT, Mobile, Healthcare and Education, across India and overseas and has made several successful exits. In 2011 alone, IAN invested over $8 million in 11 start ups making it almost a deal a month. In 2012, IAN invested in 14 companies totaling $11 million, making it almost a deal every 3 weeks.
