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The huge COVID-19 outbreak, which has caused chaos in the global economy, has also suffocated the education sector. Around 1.5 billion children, or 90% of the world's primary, intermediate, and tertiary students, are physically unable to attend school.
Educators now demand technology solutions to facilitate remote teaching and learning, which has had a revolutionary effect. However, digital transformation in the education industry is not confined to online education and learning after COVID-19.
Although some educational institutions have embraced technological solutions previously as well, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessity of digital transformation in the educational environment was understood in most schools and colleges. Lead School provides a technology-based school transformation system that ensures children receive a high-quality education.
Know more about the company profile, startup story, business model, founders, etc., of Lead School by reading this article further.
Lead School - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | Lead School |
|---|---|
| Also known as | LEAD |
| Legal Name | Leadership Boulevard Pvt. Ltd. |
| Headquarters | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
| Industry | [Ed-tech], [E-learning] |
| Founders | Smita Deorah, Sumeet Mehta |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Areas Served | India |
| Current CEO | Sumeet Mehta |
| Website | www.leadschool.in |
About Lead School
Lead School - Latest News
Lead School - Industry
Lead School - Name, Logo, and Tagline
Lead School - Founders
Lead School - Startup Story
Lead School - Vision, and Mission Statement
Lead School - Employees
Lead School - Business Model, and Revenue Model
Lead School - Funding, and Investors
Lead School - Growth
Lead School - Competitors
Lead School - Future Plans
About Lead School
Lead School provides a technology-based school transformation system that ensures children receive a high-quality education. The EdTech company assists in the digitization and transformation of inexpensive private schools to better serve children from moderate and low-income households.
It creates an integrated system to assist K-12 schools in developing curriculum, teaching methods, obtaining books and other materials from vendors, and better-evaluating learning outcomes.
Lead School was founded by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah in Mumbai, Maharashtra, in 2013. Through significant use of technology and a centralized curriculum design team, the organization partners with public and private school owners to assist in curriculum creation and teacher training, allowing kids from impoverished neighbourhoods to have access to cheap and high-quality education.
The firm has a school management software application. It has characteristics such as student learning surveillance, instructor performance, teacher training, and course content delivery. It also offers digital learning resources, as well as traditional readers and workbooks, eBooks, and learning activities. It has a mobile app for Android phones and tablets.
Lead School - Latest News
After receiving $100 million in funding, Lead School becomes the third unicorn of 2022. Unicorns are privately owned companies with a market capitalization of $1 billion or more.
In April of 2020, the Mumbai-based business received $30 million to deliver tech-enabled solutions to schools with an emphasis on digital learning through an online or hybrid model (of the digital and physical world) of schools.
After D2C brand Mamaearth and artificial intelligence firm Fractal, Lead School is the third business to join India's unicorn club in 2022. It is also the sixth edtech business in India to achieve unicorn status.
“In K-12, everyone has been talking about edtech that is direct to students by circumventing schools. And everyone focuses on test prep and tuition. Because people have accepted that schools cannot be improved. But we thought differently,” Sumeet Mehta, cofounder of Lead School, told. “That’s why we focussed on a school-based edtech (solution).”
Lead School, according to Mehta, works with 5,000 schools in 500 cities. The firm hopes to reach 2 million kids throughout the country by the start of the next fiscal year. In 2021-22, according to Mehta, the edtech business will have an annual contract value of $80 million (derived from cooperating schools).
Jeenal Jain
Lead School - Industry
The Covid-19 outbreak has expedited the use of technology in India's normally slow-paced education sector. Investors began pouring money into a sector that they had previously avoided, with India seeing $0.5 billion in EdTech funding in 2019 and $4 billion in 2020 and 2021.
The EdTech industry has grown at a breakneck pace in recent years, and it has only accelerated since Covid-19. According to research, the EdTech industry was around $750 million in 2020 and would reach $4 billion by 2025. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the wider education business, which is expected to be worth $135 billion by 2020, according to the same analysis. Early students in pre-school through continuous learners wishing to improve their skills are all part of the market.
Sarika Anand
Lead School - Name, Logo, and Tagline
Lead School's slogan says, "Lead Se Padhenge Toh Lead Karenge."
Lead School's tagline is, "Transforming Indian schools with world-class education."
Lead School was founded in 2013 by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah to provide innovative school ed-tech options to all stakeholders. The company was founded for students out there who might lead their generation ahead, as the name indicates.
Lead School - Founders
Lead School was founded in 2013, by the couple, Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
Sumeet Mehta
Sumeet Mehta is Lead School's Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Sumeet has also worked for Olay Asia Pacific and Vicks & Metamucil Asia Pacific as a brand manager. He formerly worked at Zest Philippines, as an assistant brand manager.
Smita Deorah
Co-founder, Chief Learning Officer, and Chief Operating Officer of Lead School, Smita Deorah also founded Sparsh, a non-profit organization whose mission is to impact the lives of young children from low-income communities in the field of education, enabling them to maximize their potential and live life powerfully, primarily by operating K-12 schools in rural and taluka areas and providing access to high-quality education.
Lead School - Startup Story
Affordable private schools, which have sprouted up in small communities as a substitute for free and low-quality public schools, are typically just slightly better. These schools, which number between 200,000 and 400,000 students, have poor academic attainment. Unfortunately, neither NGOs nor enterprises working in the field of education technology have much time for them.
That's the difference Sumeet Mehta (whose parents were also teachers in rural areas) and Smita Deorah have tried to bridge with their Lead schools initiative. Both believed that nobody was resolving the difficulties that smaller towns' APS faced, so they decided to take action by establishing their independent schools.
When a friend offered them land in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in 2013, they took the leap. They established the Shanti Niketan English School with their own money, starting with just a few learners and gradually increasing to roughly 25. They hired and trained a few local educators. However, Mehta quickly realized that providing a high-quality education to predominantly first-generation students was more difficult than they had anticipated.
Students could recognize the alphabet and recognize letters, but they struggled to put words together in a phrase. Likewise, while they could answer a math question using a formula, they went blank when faced with a question written in English terms.
Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, a couple, founded Lead School in 2013. The firm claims to provide cheap private schools with an integrated curriculum and technological solutions, allowing them to deliver advanced education via an online or hybrid structure. Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, started Lead with one school in 2013 with an approach to provide disruptive school edtech solutions for all stakeholders.
The Lead School team discovered that kids who were first-generation learners leapfrogged and filled gaps fast if the three primary concerns – a concentration on English, a more adaptable curriculum, and a more trained teacher – were addressed.
The Lead team grew as a result of their efforts paying off. In Maharashtra's tier-III and tier-IV towns, four new schools have been added. They now operate five schools with around 2000 pupils who pay tuition ranging from Rs 12,000 to Rs 18,000 each year.
They expanded their learning approach to their partner schools in 2016, allowing the firm to impact the lives of even more children. Their well-researched worldwide standard curriculum and integrated solutions are presently being used by over 3,000 Lead Powered Schools.
Lead School - Vision, and Mission Statement
Lead School's mission and vision statement say, "With humble values of empathy and integrity, we intend to empower India by making excellent school education accessible and affordable to each and every child.
We constantly sync our educational values with our leadership definitions, helping children LEARN well, THINK deep, DO good, and BE leaders. Backed with strong core principles and a motto to strive for excellence, our vision is clear and defined – to provide propulsive learning opportunities to over 25 million children by 2026."
Lead School - Employees
- Sumeet Mehta - Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer
- Smita Deorah - Co-founder, Chief Learning Officer & COO
- Vipul Redey - Chief Excellence Officer
- Harsh Kundra - Chief Technology Officer
- Sumit Agarwal - Chief Financial Officer
- Ritwik Khare - Chief Commercial Officer
- Nithinkumar Gadiparthi - Senior Engineering Manager
- Siddharth Nithyanand - Vice President
Lead School - Business Model, and Revenue Model
Lead School is a software-as-a-service company that enables and enhances educational institutions. It's a full-stack assessment, education, and retraining solution. Lead also has a separate app for parents that allows them to follow their children's development while also allowing their pupils to learn from home.
Lead School operates on a SaaS model, charging schools a set cost per student per year. Adopting Lead pays for itself since it frequently eliminates the need for a slew of other tools like an LMS, textbooks, and administrative software.
Lead also increases school enrolment and helps school revenue. The fact that Lead School has a 100% net retention rate proves its unique selling proposition.
Himaya Presthitha
Lead School - Funding, and Investors
Over the course of five rounds of financing, Lead School has raised a total of $166 million.
| Date | Round | Amount | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 13, 2022 | Series E | $100M | GSV Ventures, Westbridge Capital |
| Apr 26, 2021 | Series D | ₹2.2B | GSV Ventures, Westbridge Capital |
| Aug 21, 2020 | Series C | ₹2.1B | Westbridge Capital |
| Sep 1, 2019 | Series B | $7M | Elevar Equity |
| Jul 1, 2017 | Series A | $1M | Elevar Equity |
Lead School - Growth
After direct-to-consumer brand Mamaearth and artificial intelligence firm Fractal, Lead School is now the third business to join India's unicorn club in 2022. It is also the sixth edtech business in India to achieve unicorn status.
Unicorns are privately held companies with a market capitalization of $1 billion or more. Lead School, according to Mehta, works with 5,000 schools in 500 cities. The firm hopes to reach 2 million kids throughout the country by the start of the next fiscal year. In 2021-22, according to Mehta, the edtech business will have an annual contract value of $80 million (derived from cooperating schools).
“Lead’s growth last year, despite Covid disruptions, underlines its consumer-first approach and deep focus on learning outcomes. We are excited to double down our investment in Lead, to support its mission of transforming the education sector in India,” said Sandeep Singhal, managing director at WestBridge Capital.
Lead School - Competitors
CodeChef, Embibe, uFaber Edutech, ClassTag, and Coassemble are among Lead School's major competitors.
Muskaan Kapoor
Lead School - Future Plans
“LEAD School acts as the Intel inside for affordable schools and guarantees 70%+ mastery in all subjects and all grades for low/middle income students and exceeds the guarantee,” said Deborah
In the next school year, Lead School anticipates an annual revenue run-rate of $80 million. The firm intends to use the additional funding to improve its product and curriculum. It wants to reach 25 million students and increase its annual revenue to $1 billion by the end of the current year.
With more than 250 million school-aged children, India has been one of the largest global educational markets. Indian parents place a high value on their children's education because they believe it is the way to economic advancement and a better life.
Several companies, including edtech behemoths Byju's, Unacademy, and Vedantu, as well as American behemoths Amazon, Facebook, and Google, are striving to reach the country's students.
“We, at GSV, believe that the mastery guarantee is a revolutionary offering in K12 education space and has the potential to be societally transformational for students. With this strong and unique value proposition and exceptional management team, LEAD is well on its path to becoming the world’s largest and most impactful school edtech company,” she added.
FAQ
What is Lead School?
Lead School is an edtech company that partners with public and private school owners and provides a technology-based school transformation system that ensures children receive a high-quality education.
Who is the founder of Lead School?
Lead School was founded by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah in Mumbai, Maharashtra, in 2013.
Is Lead School free?
Lead School operates on a SaaS model, charging schools a set cost per student per year.
Which companies do Lead School compete with?
CodeChef, Embibe, uFaber Edutech, ClassTag, and Coassemble are among Lead School's major rivals.
Source :- https://startuptalky.com/ Author :- Sarika Anand Date :- February 10, 2022 at 10:40AM