Camp K12 raises $12M in Series A co-led by Matrix Partners India and Elevation Capital

370k+ students across 30+ countries
2x MoM revenue growth in new subject, English
2x MoM revenue growth in US market, 3x MoM revenue growth in Middle East

26th August 2021. New Delhi: Camp K12, an ed-tech startup focused on building a global online school for 21st century skills, announced today that it has raised $12M in a Series A round co-led by Matrix Partners India and Elevation Capital. The company has seen explosive growth in two new geographies, one new subject category, and a new group-class format launched over the past 6 months.

Camp K12 connects students in the 5-18 age group across the globe with inspiring teachers for live, interactive online courses across essential 21st century skill categories such as Coding and English. Students learn 1-on-1 with private teachers, or in small groups with friends, in Camp K12's gamified online environments. Outside of class, students continue to interact with classmates across Camp K12's "LinkedIn for Kids'-like community app featuring real-time multiplayer duels, self-paced quizzes, free workshops, and daily brain development.

Camp K12's US business has grown 2x month-on-month over the past 3 months, with 75% of enrolments coming at 0 CAC from organic activities. At the same time, Camp K12's Middle East business has grown 3x month-on-month. In both geos, Camp K12 offers its in-house 3D Coding platform "HatchXR' and a different Coding curriculum from its India business to create delight among a consumer segment that has already been exposed to coding basics in schools and craves a different level of cutting-edge tech exposure.

Camp K12 launched English as its first category beyond coding, with a two-year learning path for every age group, covering foundational elements such as grammar and vocabulary as well as aspirational outcomes such as Creative Writing and Public Speaking. Every child in the program writes and publishes a fiction novel to Amazon and Kindle, participates in international debates on current events, gives TED-styled talks to live audiences, competes in Spelling Bees, and more. The English business has grown 2x month on month for the past 3 months.

Over the next six months, the company will add two new geographies and one new content category, and will deepen its reach in each existing geography via a group class format that in India already accounts for 25%+ of revenues. Funds will be used to hire leaders across functions, hyperscale operations and marketing, and to build a world-class engineering and product team.

"We have laid the foundations for a global online school, and we're ready to scale. My view is that an enduring institution in a crowded market of online schools will not be built through sales & marketing excellence alone, but through differentiated acquisition, engagement, and retention of customers. I believe in the power of community, and in network effects. We have a bold roadmap for social multiplayer experiences for our kids, in class and outside of class, and we're excited for our users to start experiencing this product as early as next month.' Said Anshul Bhagi, Co-Founder, Camp K12

"We are able to establish our product leadership in every category and geography we have forayed into, be it India, Middle East, or the United States. We take pride in building a very loyal, happy and satisfied user base of hundreds of thousands of parents and students who are looking at a quality online education at affordable pricing. This series A Investment will accelerate our expansion and we are beefing up our team with experienced Do-ers from Business, Sales, Marketing, Product, Operations and Engineering.' Said Sandeep Bhagi, Co-Founder, Camp K12

"We are convinced that there is a massive global market for 21st century skills for kids. We believe that success in this global arena will require a different go-to-market playbook and product than what we've seen in the past. Camp K12, with its social, multiplayer online learning platform, has stood out from Day 1 as an innovator in this space. We have seen Camp K12 successfully using technology to own quality and end-to-end experience, and to evolve a new pedagogy for online learning. Their investment in product R&D has also allowed them to nimbly expand into new categories and geographies and to rapidly scale small group classes as a format. We're thrilled to double down on our partnership with Camp K12 and are really excited about what lies ahead.' Said Mukul Arora, Partner, Elevation Capital.

"Over the last 12 months, Camp K12 has built out on its operational excellence and customer delight function across multiple categories, from specializing in coding for the K-12 category they have now further expanded into English with a differentiated curriculum that empowers every child to publish a novel. We're excited for the next leg of growth as we co-invest with Elevation Capital in this round." Said Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix India

About the Founders:
Anshul is an MBA graduate from Harvard Business School and a Computer Science graduate from MIT. His past work experiences span McKinsey & Company, Google, Apple, and Microsoft. At MIT, he participated in the development of MIT AppInventor (kids coding platform used by 10M+ kids), and while a student, built curricula for and taught Coding / Math / Science in schools and universities across the globe, including Brazil, Italy, China, Kenya, US, and India.

Sandeep was the Founding Country Manager for Apple where he spearheaded Apple's strategic push in India for four years. Most recently he was VP, Corporate Development at Virtual Iron, a cloud virtualization platform, before he sold it to Oracle.

About Camp K12:
Camp K12 is a global online school for 21st century skills, teaching Coding, English and other STEM topics to kids spanning the age group of 5-18 via LIVE, interactive, gamified online sessions that work 10x better than status quo.

About Elevation Capital:
Elevation Capital is a leading venture capital firm which provides seed and early stage capital for emerging companies in India. Founded in 2002, Elevation is currently investing out of its seventh fund, and has over $2 billion under management. The fund is led by Managing Partner Ravi Adusumalli, along with five Partners Deepak Gaur, Mukul Arora, Mridul Arora, Vivek Mathur and Mayank Khanduja. The firm has a portfolio of over 100 companies across the internet, SaaS, consumer, financial services and logistics sectors. Elevation has been an early investor and partner to founders of category defining companies such as Acko, FirstCry, Justdial, Makemytrip, Meesho, NoBroker, Paytm, ShareChat, Swiggy, Unacademy and Urban Company, among several others.

About Matrix Partners India:
Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with approximately $1 billion under management. Founded in 2006, the firm invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market at the seed, early, and early growth stages. Matrix India has invested in several market-leading companies such as Ola (mobility), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Razorpay (payments), OfBusiness (full stack B2B marketplace), Five Star Business Finance (SME lending), Ola Electric (electric vehicles), Stanza Living (tech-enabled student housing platform), OneCard (mobile-first credit card), Country Delight (D2C dairy & fresh foods brand), DealShare (social commerce platform), Jupiter (consumer Neobank), Mswipe (mobile POS), and Zupee (leading skill-based gaming app) among others. Matrix India has advisory offices in Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai. Matrix Partners has a global network of funds investing in the US, China, and India, with approximately $5 billion under management. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in. To know more about our investment philosophy & ideologies, check out the #MatrixMoments podcast series.