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The investor is Girnar Soft, parent of auto classifieds portal CarDekho.com which is backed by Ratan Tata

Ruchir Arora, Founder, CollegeDekho

India-based online education marketplace CollegeDekho has received US$1 million in seed funding from Girnar Soft, parent of automobile classifieds portals CarDekho.com and Gaadi.com.

The startup plans to use the funds for developing its platform, building team and marketing.

CollegeDekho was founded in May this year by serial entrepreneur Ruchir Arora. The firm aims to help students through the admissions process for colleges. It enables a step-by-step college search, which suggests colleges based on simple student inputs. It also connects all prospective students of a college even before they join it.

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“Higher education in India is a market segment that requires a fresh approach to overcome the incumbent inertia. We quite liked the idea of a disruptive development that could assist students in making more informed choices,” said Amit Jain, CEO and Co-founder of Girnar.

According to CollegeDekho’s estimates, at any given time there are around 30 million students enrolled in 36,000 colleges in India.

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“Despite being the third-largest higher education market in the world, it is hugely under-penetrated and offers significant growth potential,” said Arora.

“CollegeDekho has been established to provide a transparent, open platform that facilitates interaction between students and colleges. CollegeDekho will leverage its proprietary and unique technology platform to match student preferences to prospective colleges,” he added.

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Girnar is an IT company working on offshore products and outsourced software development. In addition to CarDekho and Gaadi.com, the group also runs portals such as Zigwheels.com, BikeDekho.com and PriceDekho.com.

In January, Girnar raised US$50 million from Hillhouse, Tybourne and Sequoia Capital, and was valued at US$300 Million. It also attracted investment from the Ratan Tata and a strategic investment from HDFC Bank.

The post India’s online education marketplace CollegeDekho raises US$1M appeared first on e27.

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