E-learning platform Springboard has raised series A funding of $9.5 million led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation by Learn Capital and Jyoti Bansal, the founder of AppDynamics, as well as existing investors Blue Fog Capital, Rocketship.vc, and Moneta Ventures.
Mark Selcow, Venture Partner at Costanoa Ventures will be joining Springboard’s board. San Francisco and Bangalore based company was founded in 2013 by Parul Gupta and Gautam Tambay. The company is backed by investors like Allen Blue, co-founder of LinkedIn; Naveen Tewari, founder & CEO of InMobi, Facebook’s former VP-Product Greg Badros- to name a few.
The company provides courses focused on upskilling like data science, analytics, security, UX design etc. The company claims to have educated about 7,000 students in its three-to-six months courses in data science, UX design, and business analytics and has students and alumni in nearly 80 countries. The company has professional mentors from companies like Amazon and Airbnb to Uber and McKinsey. In addition to short upskilling courses, Springboard also provides longer job-focused programs like Digital Marketing Career Track, along with a job guarantee.
The company will use the funds to expand its offering into new verticals, courses, and geographies, improve upon the learning platform, expand career services and alumni support, and hire across product, marketing, engineering, and student services.
E-learning in India
E-learning space is crowded with small and large players both, and has rapidly expanded in the last couple of years in the country. In India, Springboard competes with the likes of Info Edge-backed MeritNation, Unacedemy, Byju’s Learning, WizIQ, iNurture, UpGrad, Jigsaw Academy, among others.
