Edtech Platform Habitat Raises INR 5 Cr From Unitus Ventures & Whiteboard Capital

Habitat, an ed-tech platform for civil service aspirants, on Tuesday announced it has raised INR 5 crore in seed funding from Unitus Ventures and Whiteboard Capital. The fresh capital will be utilised for tech development and team strengthening. The firm also plans to introduce other languages on the platform apart from already existing Hindi and English.

Habitat

Launched by IIT alumni Rohit Pande and Shikhar Sachan in 2016, the startup claims to address the gaps in enabling social learning for UPSC aspirants. The startup trains students for what is described as one of the most competitive exams wherein 1.5 million aspirants compete for 1,000 seats every year.

The startup claims that a great amount of learning happens outside the traditional classrooms, with students interacting among themselves and with teachers. The startup has tried to take this interactive-based learning to a virtual and tech-assisted platform. Currently, Habitat serves information-heavy exam segments (UPSC, state PCS, RBI, and others) using machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) for interactive learning.

Speaking about the startup, Pande, who is the chief executive officer of Habitat, said, "Habitat puts forth a communication-first pedagogy and centralises all learning activities like discussions, clearing doubts, study-plan iterations, on-demand lectures, notes sharing and assessments. Think of an organised cluster of Whatsapp or Telegram groups with your chosen mentor creating lectures on the go with you. That's the learning "habitat" for you. It's 10 times better than the one-size-fits-all videos or live classes with no real-time feedback. At Habitat, students are empowered to select their mentors, peer groups and course speed. You chat, create, bookmark and make notes on the go. That's deep, personalised learning."

The platform which registered around 60 per cent of its users from tier-II and tier-III cities aims to foray into concept-heavy competitive exam segment—JEE, PMT and others.

On the investment, Will Poole, managing partner of Unitus Ventures, said "Edtech is a burgeoning sector, with mobile-first learning leading the growth. Habitat engages learners like no other, producing measurable outcomes that play a profound role in motivating competitive aspirants. We are excited for the future this sector is bringing in, and are pleased to support innovative edtech solutions like Habitat that keep up with the ever-evolving learning patterns."

This is the second investment of Unitus Ventures in edtech this year.