Creative Galileo gets $2.5 million in seed round from Kalaari, others

Prerna A Jhunjhunwala, co-founder of Creative Galileo

Edtech startup Creative Galileo has raised $2.5 million in seed round of funding led by Kalaari Capital, making it the first company to be backed by the venture fund’s flagship CXXO programme for women founders. While Kalaari pumped in $2.1 million, and a clutch of angels. 

Started in July last year, the e-learning app for 3-10 year olds has recorded over four million downloads and claims to have over five lakh monthly active users. “It is the fastest growing early learning app in India,” contends Prerna A Jhunjhunwala, founder of Creative Galileo. Apart from the Indian subcontinent, the app has gained traction in global markets, with 10 percent downloads coming from counties such as Nepal, Bangladesh, UAE, and the US. The fresh fund raise will be used for scaling, product development, inking tieups with leading animation houses, and hiring.

“Our vision is to provide high-quality content for learning while keeping the process fun,” says Jhunjhunwala. Last year, the founder rolled out Creative Galileo’s Little Singham, an early learn app for children. Little Singham, she lets on, is a character-based early learning platform that weaves together the best of education and entertainment to create personalised, integrated learning experiences for young and developing minds. “While there are apps with global cartoon characters, our e-learning app is Indian in feel, tonality and experience,” she says. The funding, she adds, will help add more Indian and international characters and languages. The edtech startup has also partnered with Amar Chitra Katha, and got the rights to a wide range of characters to create games and videos for children.

Co-founded by Jhunjhunwala and Nikhil Naik, Creative Galileo has also tied up with Big Animation, Periwinkle, Shermaroo and Toonz.

For Kalaari, Creative Galileo happens to be the first investee from its flagship CXXO Programme that it launched earlier this year. “When we met Prerna and Nikhil, we truly saw them as shapers of a digital tomorrow, building the edtech solutions for global learners of the future,” says Vani Kola, managing director at Kalaari Capital. At Kalaari, she adds, we believe that technology in learning can bring unmatched access and affordability and improve literacy for a much larger target segment. Technology as a means of transformation led by passionate founders, designed for the next generation of young digitally native learners is what Creative Galileo stands for, she underlines.

CXXO is a Kalaari Capital initiative that seeks to level the playing field for women founders in India’s startup ecosystem. The initiative focusses on access to capital and brings together a community of women achievers across different sectors to provide mentorship to future leaders.