Bengaluru-based edtech startup FrontRow, on Wednesday, raised a seed capital of $3.2 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Elevation Capital, with participation from Deepika Padukone Family Office.
Founded by Mikhil Raj, Shubhadit Sharma, and Ishaan Preet Singh earlier this year, FrontRow helps people learn things that they are passionate about including music, comedy, cricket and much more. The company on its platform has onboarded various superstars, sportsmen and celebs to teach the respective talents to the learners.
The company said that the fresh funds will be deployed towards adding more courses and creating more categories, expand FrontRow’s community offering, and augment course formats.
The founders possess substantial experience. Prior starting FrontRow, Mikhil Raj led consumer product at ZestMoney after the company acquired his previous startup, Photograph AI. Shubhadit Sharma was VP Engineering at Glowroad and previously held key roles at OYO, Vahan and Finomena. Ishaan Preet Singh was an investor at Lightspeed and a consultant at McKinsey.
Commenting on the development for FrontRow, Akshay Bhushan, Partner at Lightspeed, in a statement said,
“We’ve known this team for years and are extremely excited to back a team building a new paradigm for learning – a cross between learning, entertainment, and community.”
Bhushan further added,
“We’ve been early investors across these categories with BYJU’S and Sharechat, and believe that a solution needs to pick the best from all of them.”
Shubhadit said,
“In our communities we see users from across the country, with massive pull from small towns such as Shivpur, where a user actually set up their own comedy club.”
Sharing her thoughts, Bollywood celebrity and investor, Deepika Padukone, said,
“If there’s one thing I wish I had access to while growing up, it would be a platform like FrontRow, one that gives individuals access to abundant knowledge in non-academic fields and connects them to a community of peers and professionals in their field of interest.”
Mayank Khanduja, Partner at Elevation Capital, stated,
“Our past investments in the education, social and creator space such as Unacademy, Sharechat and CampK12 have made us extremely bullish on the opportunity to create large learning and community platforms in India. Once we spoke to FrontRow’s early users, we saw similar potential, and the need for a platform like this became very clear.”
