CuriousJr, an online coding platform for kids, on Tuesday, said it raised a seed round of $1 million led by WaterBridge Ventures, EnziaVentures, and angel investors.

Angel investors, including Aditya Shankar (Co-founder, Doubtnut), Tanushree Nagori (Co-founder, Doubtnut), Abhinav Sinha (COO, Oyo), Mohd Wassem (Founder, EasyEat), and Shashank Shekhar (Director- Content Strategy and Operations at ShareChat).

According to an official statement, CuriousJr will use these funds to further refine the product and create an engaging learning ecosystem for students. Along with this, the startup will also focus on community development, expanding team, and creating more appealing and engaging content for users.

Co-founded by Amit Shekhar, Janishar Ali, and Mridul Ranjan Sahu, CuriousJr is a mobile-first, vernacular-based, online platform focused on students between the ages 8 and 17 years.

The platform helps students learn coding with the help of bite-sized content, test their knowledge in a practice arena, and publish their creations on the CuriousJr app store, which they can then share with friends, family and the larger community.

“We started CuriousJr to make coding education accessible to everyone, but we realised that 88 percent of the K-12 users in India do not have access to a PC/laptop. That’s why we focused on building India’s first mobile-based code learning platform for K-12 in vernacular languages. We believe that learning in one’s mother tongue empowers young students to think and harness their coding skills more effectively to become excellent coders for tomorrow,” said Mridul Ranjan Sahu.

Commenting on the investment, Nilesh Balakrishnan, AVP at WaterBridge Ventures, said,

“Coding is quickly evolving into the de facto measure of student success in India. As tech continues to revolutionise the Indian experience, parents have shifted their focus from maths/STEM subjects to computer science focused expertise. We believe CuriousJr’s mobile product innovation and gamified learning outcomes can democratise coding for millions of young coders across the country.”

Namita Dalmia, Partner at Enzia Ventures, added, “In edtech, coding for kids is seeing great traction, especially with successes like WhiteHatJr, and the National Education Policy's recognition of coding as an important skill for kids to learn. CuriousJr is disruptive, and its unique mobile-first learning experience is democratising learning."

"Less than a year old, CuriousJr is already demonstrating high traction and user engagement. At Enzia, we see a lot of promise in their vision and technique, and are excited to be partnering with them,” she added.

According to Janishar Ali, students have created over 75,000 apps and games on CuriousJr, and the startup looks forward to taking this to one million within the next year.

(Link to story - https://yourstory.com/2021/09/coding-platform-edtech-startup-curiousjr-seed-round-waterbridge/amp)

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