Matrix Partners India & SAIF Partners co-lead a $4M investment in Camp K12

2nd April 2020. New Delhi: Camp K12, a startup focused on building a global online school for K-12, announced today that it has raised USD 4 million in a Seed round led by Matrix Partners India and SAIF Partners.

Founded by Anshul Bhagi and Sandeep Bhagi, Camp K12 connects students from kindergarten to 12th grade, providing access to quality teachers for interactive, gamified, and live-learning courses for STEAM subjects. With the overarching objective of building a global platform, Camp K12 has chosen to launch in the Indian market with coding for kids as the first vertical '“ a category in which both the founders have deep experience, having previously trained over 50,000 K-12 students and partnered with 100s of schools across India.

Anshul Bhagi, an MIT Computer Science and Harvard Business School MBA graduate, has previously worked with prestigious organizations such as McKinsey, Google and Microsoft, and was part of the team at MIT that developed coding-for-kids platform, "MIT AppInventor', which has over 10M users worldwide. Sandeep Bhagi, was responsible for bringing Apple to India and led its operations as the country manager.

"Schools haven't changed in a 100 years. Kids today learn the same things that their parents learned a generation ago, and they learn in the same factory batch-processing sort of way. At Camp K12 we're re-imagining what school would look like if we could build from scratch today in 2020, for the next 100 years. We're re-defining WHAT we teach, and HOW we teach, taking inspiration from gig economy plays that efficiently match supply with demand and from large online, social, multiplayer gaming experiences that kids love to spend time on. This problem has been close to my heart for nearly a decade, since I first started teaching coding, math, and science to students in classrooms around the world. I'm excited to be able to tackle it with an incredible team looking to shake things up in k-12 education.' Said Anshul Bhagi, Co-Founder, Camp K12

"Our last few years working with parents, schools, and students has taught us the art of engaging young students and teaching essential 21st century skills through hands-on tinkering and problem solving. In this journey, Anshul and I are excited to partner with Matrix and SAIF, two VCs with solid experience backing leading online companies across India, China, and the US. We are aggressively hiring teachers and operators who are excited about building a global online school of the future.' Said Sandeep Bhagi, Co-Founder, Camp K12

"Parents are increasingly feeling the need to equip their children with new age skills beyond academics. For many of these skills, live online video and interactive mentor-led instruction are far more powerful than what is available for kids today. Camp K12'˜s custom-built virtual classroom environment for small-group learning, their pedagogy, and their curriculum reflect a passion for education, deep consumer understanding, and profound technical capability. We feel this market is going to grow exponentially and Camp K12 is well positioned to capture it, at global scale. We're thrilled to be a part of this journey with the founders and Matrix Partners India.' Said Mukul Arora, Managing Director, SAIF Partners.

"With the increasing penetration of devices and the internet across the globe, online learning for kids is becoming the norm. The team's razor-sharp focus on building a truly 10X better product that enables highly engaging learning experiences for kids, sets them apart from global peers. We are privileged to be on this journey with Anshul and Sandeep along with our co-investors SAIF Partners, to build the global online school of the future.' 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 and other extra-curriculars to kids spanning the age group of 5-18 via LIVE, interactive, gamified online sessions that work 10x better than status quo.

About SAIF Partners:
SAIF Partners is an India focussed Venture Capital fund, currently having $4 billion under management. Since 2002, SAIF Partners has been investing in early stage companies across sectors and stages. Some notable investments include Paytm, Swiggy, Urban Company, Justdial, Rivigo, Firstcry, Meesho, Acko, Sharechat, NoBroker, Spinny, Chaayos amongst 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 (local transportation), Quikr (online classifieds), Practo (digital health platform), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Treebo (digital hotel chain), Limeroad (social e-commerce platform), Mswipe (mobile POS), Five Star Business Finance (SME lending), OfBusiness (credit led B2B marketplace), Ola Electric (multimodal electric vehicle platform), Razorpay (payments), Stanza Living (tech enabled student housing platform) Vogo (scooter sharing), Testbook (Govt. job exam prep.) and Cloudnine Hospitals (leading chain of maternity hospitals), 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