Filo Raises $260,000 In Pre-Seed Round From Better Capital Filo plans to use the funding to scale its services to millions of students and significantly grow its tutor base
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Instant tutor app Filo on Thursday announced to have raised $260,000 as part of its pre-seed investment round from Better Capital based on organic adoption by thousands of students purely driven by word of mouth.
With the mission to democratize access to the best teachers, the platform was founded by Imbesat Ahmad and Shadman Anwer in October 2020.
"True learning happens during self-study for most students and if they get stuck with a concept or a problem, it kills time, disrupts the day's schedule, creates a backlog, and leads to anxiety as the student falls behind her class. In such a situation, all that is needed is a small high-quality intervention from a teacher who can be reached on-demand to clarify the concept and the student is back on track. This problem affects over 200 million students every year," said Imbesat Ahmad, co-founder, and chief executive officer, Filo.
At any time more than 10 million students study for school exams, college entrance, or government job exams but half of them lose motivation due to a lack of timely and reliable support for their queries. The platform has been said to have access to tutors on-demand within just 60 seconds for a one-to-one video call.
"On our platform, students can learn - what they want to learn, when they want, how to want, and from whom they want. We are not bulldozing them with a new set of thousands of GB of data of text or video materials but giving them space to just overcome their hurdles at the earliest possible," shared Shadman Anwer, co-founder, and chief technology officer, Filo.
In a short period of time, over 35,000 students have been said to have completed 1.5 million minutes of sessions on the platform - getting help for critical questions from high-quality tutors within minutes of experiencing the need.
"Filo is one of the most impactful education apps that democratizes affordable access to a good teacher for everyone from urban well-to-do students to poor students in remote parts of India - the fact that it was the missing piece in India's education puzzle is evident from the massive adoption it has seen purely based on word-of-mouth. We are excited to partner with Imbesat and Shadman," added Vaibhav Domkundwar, founder and chief executive officer, Better Capital, an early investor in multiple innovative edtech companies including Skill Lync, Teachmint, Virohan, Stoa School, and others.
In spite of the new crop of education-focused companies, millions of students in India suffer from a lack of affordable support for their education. This has been the central idea for the founders of the app that gives students instant access to a high-quality tutor who speaks in their mother tongue, the company said.
Students all over India have been at a huge disadvantage with schools and coaching classes being shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the upcoming JEE and NEET examinations, the company aims to help students overcome this challenge by reaching qualified tutors on-demand to get help for their self-study.
