Mentor Match Raises $1 Million In Pre-Seed Round Funding

Edtech startup Mentor Match secured $1 million in pre-Seed round of funding. The investment was made by US-based seed stage venture fund Sapient Fund. The self-study platform which helps students of classes 8-12 connect with peers to facilitate learning was founded in 2020 by architecture graduates, Rohit Raheja (CEO), Sachit Dugar (COO) and Rayhaan Shaik (CMO).

Sapient Fund currently works with entrepreneurs and startups in cyber security, data-driven decision science, AI/ML areas. On the investment, Karthik Sundaram, CEO, Sapient Fund, said, "The team at Mentor Match is constantly having its ear-to-the-ground and innovates at ridiculous speed. We believe they will continually disrupt the learning industry and are already proving it with their fanatical client base--a reason why Sapient chose to invest in them."

The edtech company currently employees about 50 people. Raheja said the funding will help them build out founding teams across tech, marketing and operations departments, openings of which have been posted on the company website already. The funding will also allow them to offer competitive salaries and ESOP packages to the workforce.

Mentor match is a relatively new entrant in the competitive edtech space and has work cut out for it. In 2021, edtech was the third most funded sector in India, raising $4.7 billion in funding.

While the sector is seeing emerging players and has seen continuous expansion in the past two years, Mentor Match has identified a unique angle in virtual learning which they hope to build upon. Dugar, the COO, said: "While studying, students face a lot of doubts either in understanding concepts or solving questions that are not cleared in real-time because they don't have access to teachers at home and resources on the internet are uploaded for masses not as per the requirement of an individual. The doubt clearance apps which exist today are text/video-based and lack personal attention."