From the Press Release:
Accel Partners, a leading global venture capital firm and a group of angels led by Meena Ganesh (CEO & MD Pearson Education Services India) has announced its investment of INR 2.7 crores in a Delhi based education company Mind Edutainment Pvt. Ltd. (MEPL).
Mind Edutainment was created in the year 2007 with a focus to serve in the field of child development through cognitive thinking process. Sangeeta A. Khurana & Ashutosh Khurana pioneered the concept of HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) development program in India with the use of physical Thinking Tools and Mind Games. The program created by them has been adopted by 40 plus schools and 50000 plus students of UKG to Grade VIII as a complete subject on thinking skills development.
They have created India’s first of its kind ‘THOTS Lab’, a scientifically designed space in the school, with a purpose to equip the future generations with the wisdom of structured “Thinking Skills and Thinking Processes”.
“This investment is part of our ongoing effort to invest in startups that aim to strengthen the education ecosystem in India. ‘THOTS Lab’ created by Mind Edutainment shall bring direct focus on Thinking Development within the school environment. The Lab cultivates originality of thought and promotes experiential learning to develop 250+ thinking and cognitive skills such as Problem Solving, Decision Making and Options Testing” said Mr. Anand Daniel from Accel Partners.
Meena Ganesh, CEO and MD, Pearson Education Services India, said, “THOTS Lab initiative from Mind Edutainment is quite a revolutionary concept. Developing the thinking abilities amongst Primary and Middle years of education is indeed a radical need for the present day competitive environment. Thinking development coupled with the regular curriculum can make a potent combination for the best-of-breed education systems. And, with this investment, we are looking at providing a solution not to our country but to the other countries as well.”
“The investment raised shall help the company to now scale the initial pilot project of THOTS Lab from 3 cities to 8 cities. With this funding, we shall be able to install THOTS Lab across Delhi, Dehradun, Chandigarh, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi & Pune. We shall also be using a part of this funding to integrate ICT in our delivery process to create an ideal mix of ICT and Experiential Learning. We are designing and developing HOTS development games (in physical and digital formats) to establish ourselves as one of the leaders in learning based games” said Mr. Ashutosh Khurana Co-Founder & CEO, Mind Edutainment Pvt. Ltd
Mind Edutainment’s Thinking Development program was adjudged as the winner of the 'Power of Ideas' 2010 event in the education space. The event was organised by the Department of Science and Technology and the Economic Times in association with Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad's (IIM-A) Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). It received a seed funding from DST, Govt. of India in 2010 which is being managed by CIIE IIM-A.
About Accel
Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, California, New York City, London and Bangalore, as well as in China via its partnership with IDG-Accel.
Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful companies, many of which have defined their categories, including 99designs, Actuate, AdMob, Agile Software, Alfresco, Angry Birds (Rovio), Atlassian, BBN, Bonobos, Braintree, Brightcove, Cloudera, ComScore, Diapers.com (Quidsi), Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Fusion-IO, Gameforge, GlamMedia, Groupon, Imperva, Infinera, Interwoven, IronPlanet, JBoss, Kayak,Lookout, Macromedia, metroPCS, MoPub, OPOWER, Polycom/PictureTel, Playfish, Portal Software, QlikTech, Rapt, Real Networks, Redback, Responsys, Riverbed, Spotify, Squarespace, SunRun, Trulia, UUNet, Veritas, Walmart.com, Webroot, Wonga, XenSource and Zimbra.
In India, Accel has made investments in companies such as Ace Creative Learning, Babyoye, EduPristine, enStage, Flipkart, Forus, FreshDesk, HealthcareMagic, Mitra Biotech, MuSigma, Myntra, Perfint, Probe, PropTiger, QwikCilver, SherSingh, SureWaves, Trivone, Vinculum and Virident.