EdTech Startup Shikho Raises $1.3M in Seed Funding

Dhaka-based K12 focused EdTech startup Shikho announced that it has raised $1.3 million in a new seed funding round co-led by Anchorless Bangladesh and returning investor LearnStart, the seed fund of edtech investment firm Learn Capital and participated by Wavemaker Partners and Teachable founder and CEO Ankur Nagpal. 

Shikho previously raised $275,000 in two pre-seed rounds from Learn Capital and Zubair Siddiky and Ambareen Reza, the Co-founders and Managing Directors of Foodpanda Bangladesh. 

Founded in 2019 by Shahir Chowdhury and Zeeshan Zakaria, Shikho initially launched with one subject: SSC general math for classes nine and ten. The company now covers classes 9 to 12 and plans to introduce content for all of K12 and up to university level and continuous education. 

The company uses a limited freemium model where students can access its content for free for seven days upon downloading Shikho app. With the fresh fund, the company aims to push the growth further with offline sales strategies, an app for parents, and expand its freemium model. 

Why it matters: 

• Access to quality education is a major challenge for a large number of students in Bangladesh. The quality is not evenly distributed across the country. The best schools are concentrated geographically, making high-quality education almost inaccessible to most pupils. Even in Dhaka, only a small number of parents can afford to send their kids to the best schools. 
• The internet could effectively break this distribution problem and create more equitable access to quality education across the country. Shikho says it aims to address this challenge. 
• Shikho claims that it has created a curriculum that is different and better from what is available in the market. And it has built a product that takes the challenges of online learning into consideration such as lack of engagement and keeping students motivated to learn. Combinedly, the company says it has figured out a model to win the market. 

The bottom line: EdTech has seen decent growth in Bangladesh in the past few years. While the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the pace, the sector suffers from infrastructural challenges such as lack of access to devices and internet and high cost and poor quality mobile data in suburban and rural areas. 

Moreover, even though the sector has a number of interesting startups in verticals such as K12, skill development, and continuous education, like many other verticals in Bangladesh, the industry did not see many investments limiting the ability of the players to invest in growth and market penetration. 

Over the past few years, investors have shown increasing interest in EdTech. In India, Bangladesh's neighbor, several large players exist in the vertical, including Byju's and the vertical is well known for attracting large investments. The fact that Shikho has raised new investment is a testament to this new market reality and that things are about to change for the vertical in Bangladesh. 

Learn more: New EdTech Startup Shikho Launches, Aims to Provide High-Quality Digital Education at an Affordable Price