Our Investment in Curious Jr
#Coding #K-12 #EdTech #WaterBridgeVentures #InvestmentMemo
Education holds the promise of a better life and boundless opportunities, the proverbial ‘silver bullet’ that drives Indian parents to invest heavily in their children’s education. As the internet story continues to enhance its digital reach across the country, we believe that technology will have an outsized impact on the aspirations and ambitions of the next generation of students. Students are already looking to harness technology in their own lives by building apps and products.
Coding has quickly become the de-facto measure of student success in India. Students and parents have shifted their focus away from Maths/STEM subjects to Computer Science and coding-focused learning outcomes
Coding has become what Mathematics and English represented for earlier generations — a life skill that can unlock career prospects in the modern world. Parents today would rather see their children develop applications and products via tangible programming skills (which can lead to employment opportunities) rather than purely succeeding at mathematics and rote learning.
Our investment in Curious Jr reflects our conviction that coding is not just a subject worth mastering but more a life skill that can transform India into a tech powerhouse for decades to come!
Unbounded Opportunity
Indian Edtech has been on fire for the past 5 years. A large untapped market, ever-increasing internet penetration, and extensive marketing by large EdTech players have led to a significant rise in EdTech awareness across the country. Today, over 160M Indian households have an active internet connection with over 80% of students keen to use (60% willing to pay) Edtech products to enhance learning outcomes.
With over 270M+ students across city tiers, income groups, language proficiencies, and curricula - the K-12 slice of the EdTech market has significant headroom to grow as spent on digital products grows multifold. Assuming an INR 600 monthly spend on EdTech products, the EdTech market has the potential to be a $20B+ opportunity!
At WaterBridge Ventures, we are strong believers in the Bharat story and firmly believe that the largest growth boom in the K-12 Edtech space will come from students in non-metro cities (Tier 1+). These students are mobile-first, digitally native, and strongly aspirational.
Today, this segment represents an overwhelming majority of India’s student population but only 30% of the current EdTech user base!
Coding is cool
Coding as a skill has taken off over the last few years. However, almost all options in the market are focused on the desktop/laptop experience — infrastructure that many students in Tier 1+ cities currently don’t have access to. Teacher shortages, poor training, and the lack of a supportive learning community have limited these students’ ability to learn to code so far.
Curious Jr is a vernacular, mobile-first online coding platform that aims to teach students the fundamental tenets of coding. The vision is to create an EdTech platform that democratizes coding as a way of thinking for all students by enabling learning via mobile phones
Curious Jr (CJ) aims to democratize coding education for all students between the ages of 10 - 18 by helping students across the country learn, practice, and experience coding. Innovative UI/UX enhancements help students efficiently code via the limited form factor of a mobile phone. Students embark on a coding journey by participating in mini-courses that use instructional videos, code blocks, guided hints, and Q&A sections to build coding mastery.
At the end of each mini-course, students create, test, and publish their custom-built applications to the CJ application store to progress to the next level in the journey. Students are given publication certificates and can share their work with friends, family, and the larger Curious Jr community.
By tying each learning experience to a tangible application, the CJ app builds a sense of gamified accomplishment. Students share, like, comment, and upvote student applications; leading to a rich and interactive community experience with the potential for powerful peer-to-peer learning vectors.
Super Founding Team
From the moment we met college hostel mates Amit, Ali, and Mridul - we knew the CJ founding team had all the right ingredients to crack this market. Built at IIT Varanasi, the team brings a unique blend of entrepreneurial experience, growth hacking expertise, product chops, and a long history of teaching coding digitally.
Both Amit and Ali have been active bloggers and teachers at MindOrks and have been deeply involved in teaching coding to students of all ages on the internet while Mridul’s strong operational experience at OYO and Circle has helped him glean primary insights on use cases and monetization strategies that click in smaller Indian towns.
As part of our dedicated seed program FastForward, we believe the fantastic team at Curious Jr is best placed to drive product-led growth for millions of students across the country.
Try the Curious Jr app here today!
Press coverage: https://yourstory.com/2021/09/coding-platform-edtech-startup-curiousjr-seed-round-waterbridge/amp
