The company said it will use the funding for product development, hiring senior leadership and for global expansion.
Other investors who participated in the round include Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Ashish Gupta, Gokul Rajaram and Shirish Nadkarni.
The company had previously raised $3.7 million from Prime Ventures, FIITJEE and several angel networks. The latest round takes the total amount raised by the firm to $17.2 million.
Founded in 2017 by Kunal Malik and Maneesh Dhooper, PlanetSpark is a platform that helps children become better communicators. It offers one-to-one classes in public speaking and creative writing for children aged four to 16 years. The curriculum includes storytelling, debate, podcasting, stand-up comedy and poetry.
The company, which is growing 30% month-on-month, has coached students with more than one million classes across 13 countries. “We grew 45x over the past year and have plans to grow further by 30x over the next two years,” the company said in a statement.
STARTUP ROCKSTARS IN 2021
Sign-in to see our list of the most promising startups of 2021
Kunal Malik, co-founder, PlanetSpark said communication skills are the most fundamental and desirable skills that parents wish to impart in their kids. However, these skills are rarely taught anywhere. “Till now, parents never thought that a reliable and structured option to develop communication skills of their children existed. With live learning coming of age in the past two years, we are the first global company to structure a programme on new-age communication skills for kids,” he said.
Apart from India, the company has presence across the US, West Asia and Europe. “The company will use the fresh funds to penetrate deeper into the existing markets and expand into new geographies,” said the statement.
“India offers a pool of 1.8 million potential and current English teachers who can impart these skills to the entire globe. We plan to hire 50,000 teachers on our platform by the end of 2022. Overall, this is a golden opportunity to build the world leader in communication skills that didn’t exist till now,” said Maneesh Dhooper, co-founder, PlanetSpark.
According to the company, the global market for communication skills is more than $80 billion and it remains largely untapped.
“Everyone learns a language but few learn to communicate well. Communication skills are going to be a life-defining skill in the 21st century,” said Amit Somani, partner, Prime Venture Partners.
For all the latest Technology News Click Here
