Maidaan, a social edutainment platform, has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed round, led by investors such as Inflection Point Ventures and EvolveX, with participation from We Founder Circle. The raised funds will be primarily directed towards advancing product development, innovating content, games and tournament formats, according to an official release.
Through live, bite-sized olympiads and tournaments, Maidaan aims to provide an avenue for exploring education and building a peer community beyond traditional school boundaries. The platform aspires to empower more than 100 million Indian students from an early age. Maidaan’s mission goes beyond conventional classroom learning, fostering an environment where growth and learning extend beyond boundaries, the release mentioned.
“Today when everything is digital, our education still relies on outdated methods and uninspiring textbooks. Maidaan addresses this by integrating learning into interactive games and quizzes, challenging the conventional notion that education is limited to the classroom,” Rahul Wagh, managing director, Inflection Point Ventures, says.
Maidaan claims that its pilot version has engaged students from more than 100 schools across more than 25 cities in India. The platform has initiated strategic annual and quarterly collaboration plans with schools, with Pune being the initial focal city for expansion.
“Beyond the top 5% elite in India, millions of students don’t get a chance to experience a world beyond the walls of their schools before Class 12, reducing the potential of social mobility. The only way to solve this is to make exposure-beyond-school truly accessible and affordable in a language and format that students understand and speak themselves,” Judhajit Bal, co-founder, CEO, Maidaan, said.
Having secured pivotal strategic collaborations with schools on annual and quarterly levels, Maidaan claims to maintain engagement and robust user retention rates on the platform. In Middle-India households, the age group of 5-15 is projected to exceed 100 million children by 2030, indicating a substantial market. Furthermore, the supplemental learning segment, encompassing education beyond schooling, is forecasted to reach a significant market value of $5 billion in India alone by 2030, it added.