Mindler, a comprehensive career guidance platform for students and educators; has announced today that it is raising a USD 1 Million pre-series-A round lead by Inflection Point Ventures. The newly raised funds will be utilized towards expanding Mindler’s base of institutional partnerships and alliances. As part of its growth chart for 2021, Mindler now plans to further strengthen its platform with the objective of shaping the entire career guidance ecosystem.
Keeping its growth momentum high, Mindler registered 2020 as the landmark year by growing its collaborations and partnerships, transforming its in-school career guidance programs completely and saw over 90% client retention in 2020. Further to its growth, Mindler’s International Certification and Credentialing Program for educators saw over 400% increase with a huge number of educators taking to career guidance in order to bridge the gap of over 1.5 million career coaches in India. The company further plans to accelerate the growth of its alumni pool of over 10,000 certified career coaches across the globe. Taxmann Group and CIIE IIM Ahmedabad are other notable investors in the ed-tech start-up.
Founded by Prateek Bhargava, a double MBA from Indian School of Business Hyderabad & MDI Gurgaon; Mindler aims to shape the career guidance landscape while empowering all stakeholders in the student career decision making journey. Apart from a comprehensive career guidance platform for students, Mindler also offers a SaaS platform for educators & ed-tech partners to create their own career guidance ecosystem. Using the SaaS portal, within 5 minutes an educator or an ed-tech partner can setup their career guidance portal and offer scientific guidance. In the largely unregulated career guidance market, Mindler is also working towards creating & certifying career coaches through a multi-level credentialing program in collaboration with National Career Development Association (USA) and Career Development Alliance (USA).
Sharing his perspective on the development Prateek Bhargava, Founder of Mindler said, “We are very excited to have the support from IP Ventures and their network of C-Suite leaders from across the globe. Apart from IP Ventures, we are also in final stage talks with a few HNIs for this round. Despite all its challenges, 2020 has been a phenomenal year for us. It has been a landmark year for us especially in terms of collaborations and we are all geared towards increasing the same in the coming year. We are focusing on both the demand and supply side of the career guidance landscape and thus creating a sustainable model for long term client engagement and retention. We are driving a movement to enable students to take a scientific approach towards career decision making.”
Mitesh Shah, Co-Founder IPV added “This year marks the rise of many exciting startups in one of the fastest growing segment in startup Ecosytem- Edutech. IPV is excited to partner with one such unique story in this space – Mindler and back their growth journey. With their Cutting Edge product, deep relationships with schools and above all its dynamic Founding Team , Mindler is solving a genuine problem in a very efficient way and has penetrated really very well amongst career aspirants. IPV ,with its vast Investor base of CXOs from diverse industries including Edutech, will help Mindler access a large unexplored market base and expand its network exponentially while enhancing the Tech capabilities as well.”
During the pandemic, the company also launched a new initiative called the Mindler Scholarship Hunt to support students in these testing times. Mindler Scholarship Hunt, a one of its kind scholarship hunt creates an opportunity for 12th grade students from over 1000+ schools from India and the Middle East and intends to offer scholarships worth INR 25 Cr up across leading Indian Universities. Launched in collaboration with Afairs Exhibitions and Education World in December 2020, the initiative was inaugurated by Mr. Gerry Arathoon (Chief Executive-CISCE).
In a market where, 99% schools lack a career guidance setup, 1.5+ million career coaches are needed and over 92% seek scientific career guidance; a platform like Mindler is the need of the hour.
About Mindler:
Mindler is a venture conceptualised and run by alumni of ISB, IIT, IIM, Harvard and the world’s preeminent psychometricians. The Mindler platform equips students, counsellors and schools to have a career planning platform which is future-ready and empowers all the concerned stakeholders with state-of-the-art technology, driven by machine learning algorithms and in-depth analytics. Mindler has been awarded and commended by the Ministry of Science & Technology (Government of India), Ministry of State (UAE Government), Entrepreneur India, ISB D-Labs, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade, Education World, Economic Times and CIIE at IIM Ahmedabad.
About Inflection Point Ventures:
Inflection Point Ventures is a 3000+ strong members angel investing firm that supports new-age entrepreneurs, providing them monetary & experiential capital by connecting them with a diverse group of investors. Believing that ‘Everyone can Grow with Startups’, IPV was started in 2018 and plans to invest INR 155 cr in 2021 across 60 startups. IPV’s investors’ base is seeing a massive influx of highly accomplished CXOs and HNIs, looking to invest in startups with rational valuation and sustainable business model.
Also read: Mindler launches the World’s Largest Internship Drive