Jaipur based Qriyo, an online home tutor startup has become Rajasthan’s first startup to raise foreign funding.Qriyo, founded by IIT-Bombay alumni Mudit Jain and Rishabh Jain, is operational in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur and plans to expand to other cities including Chandigarh.  The partial Series-A funding of an undisclosed amount has recently been done by Dubai based venture capital firm NB Ventures.  Neelesh Bhatnagar, who leads NB Ventures, is the ex-CEO of Landmark Arabia  and e-Max.

Neelesh is also the co-owner of the Dubai Team of Indian Tennis Premier League, along with Virat Kohli and earlier on, has also invested in Bengaluru based startups HealthifyMe and LetsTransport.

Qriyo has earlier raised seed funding from another UAE based fund, Idein Ventures, led by Ashwin Srivastava

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Qriyo was founded in 2015 by IIT-B Alumni, Mudit Jain & Rishabh Jain. Qriyo positioned itself as end to end Home Tutor Provider platform. It combines the power of technology with real human services to deliver best possible learning by Qriyo Gurus. The venture currently has 8000+ tutors in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Ahmedabad. They have 2500+ customers with 50,000+ hours of teaching delivered via their platform. They received seed round of funding from UAE based Idein Ventures in January 2016.

Qriyo has separate apps for tutors ‘Gurus’ and for Students. The app enables tutors to see nearby opportunities, manage tuitions and improve knowledge. It also vets tutors using Guru Evaluation test on 17 parameters including subject knowledge, behavioral patterns like – ethics, anger management, empathy etc. The dedicated customer app enables students to check Guru Profiles, give feedback, track attendance, renew and pay for classes. They have also developed proprietary Matchmaking Algorithm which automates tutor selection process, hence customer can get single most suitable profile.

The startup earns majority of its revenue via tutor commission. Talking to co-founder and CEO, Mudit described that they have different slabs for different courses ranging from 15% to 50% per month. Qriyo incentivizes tutors who are associated with them for longer duration and have good customer ratings. He said that Qriyo is also providing tutors and instructors to schools, institutes and summer camps. He informed that Qriyo has 62% renewal rate and 30% upselling. Share of organic business stands at 60% and is increasing every month.

Mudit said, “Qriyo is the only tech player in the country who has long term vision of enabling transactions in this listing and lead-generation space. We have built a tech platform that makes it super easy for customer to learn anything at home. They don’t have to browse through endless tutor profiles to select a tutor. Our newly launched website along with our mobile apps make it super easy for our customers to book a tutor. We track all guru parameters including real customer ratings, punctuality, attendance, conversion percentage, student score improvement which gives us power to automate tutor profiling like no other player can. We are making conventional home tuition agency business truly scalable. Many tutors are making 5 digit remuneration by just teaching few hours of tuitions. We are truly humbled by response of our Gurus and Customers.”

With this fresh round of funding Qriyo aims to expand its operations in Chandigarh by June 2017. They will also expand the courses offered in personalised competitive exams preparation & pet training categories. They also aim to on-board 16,000 more gurus by end of this year. With improved technology Qriyo is expecting to automate part of its support and cut Teacher Match Time to half in next 6 months.

Speaking of funding, Neelesh said, “Qriyo is a lifestyle business, I can see huge demand for their services. Qriyo team is working towards creating an automated ecosystem for delivering quality learning services at home. It has been 1 year since I am associated with the team as a mentor. I look forward to helping them expand to the Middle East at the right time. Qriyo’s growth journey has been fascinating so far.” Neelesh has earlier invested in Bengaluru based startups HealthifyMe & LetsTransport. He is also a joint owner of Dubai team of Indian Tennis Premier League (ITPL) with Virat Kohli. Neelesh Bhatnagar was one of the shareholders of Landmark Group and Ex-CEO of Emax and Landmark Arabia. Qriyo aims to use the additional funding to strengthen tech and operations. Talking about 2017, Co-Founder and COO Rishabh said, “The summer months are crucial for us as it brings great demands both in academics and extracurricular segment. We are already profitable in 2 cities & we will achieve companywide operational break even overall without impacting the growth. 30% MoM growth will continue in terms of sales & guru on boarding for next 6 to 9 months. We are also in negotiation stage of UAE expansion. We have strong support & mentoring from both our investors Idein Ventures and Neelesh.”

Ashwin Srivastava, Director of Idein Ventures and Qriyo, says, “We are extremely proud of our investment in Qriyo as it has started changing the definition of education in small cities of India. We see them as a major international player in the long run, as problems of education in India are similar to those in UAE, China and rest of Asia. We have contributed a lot to Qriyo beyond money and hope to continue the same and take them global in the long run.”