Mumbai-based startup HobSpace has raised around Rs 1 crore in pre-Series A1 round by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV). Last year, the startup had closed a Rs 3.3 crore seed round from Artha Ventures, Angel List and few others, HobSpace said in a statement.
The funds will be used to multiply its offline centres to reach out to the top towns over the next 3 years, the statement added.
To start with, HobSpace intends to have 20 centres in the top 3 cities in the next 12 months. The education industry has more than 350 million K-12 students in India, out of which 56 million kids reside in urban India. With Rs 1,000 billion supplemental education market (growth rate of 8%), there is a large, fast-growing and untapped market opportunity that HobSpace is addressing, the statement notified.
Mitesh Shah, Co-Founder, IPV, says, “With education moving online, children are increasingly finding it hard to carve out their playtime. Even parents are worried about it and HobSpace, which has a mix of offline and online activities for children, makes their model quite attractive to us. Given the pandemic, HobSpace still logged 33% growth in subscriber base m-o-m. We also liked their focus on unit economics and business viability.”
HobSpace intends to transform the under-utilised school buildings, playgrounds, clubhouses and community centres into educational playgrounds and hobby centres with diverse after-school activities. The children have a plethora of options to choose from, including indoor as well as outdoor activities. The company has students from India, UAE, Singapore and South Africa.
Priyal Goel Sheth, Co-Founder, HobSpace, says, “IPV has provided us tremendous support since our first engagement. One thing that we always stress upon at HobSpace is having great partners who can guide and mentor us while we build and scale this exciting model.”
Co-founded in 2019 by Priyal Goel Sheth and Harsh Jain, HobSpace, during the lockdown, quickly capitalised on-time availability with kids and the changing needs of learning, both in India and internationally.
