Hyderabad-based ‘Bulbul Apps’, an early childhood learning app developer for pre-schoolers has raised Rs 3.5 crore ($500K) in a fresh round of funding from Xseed Partners, Operator VC, Anblicks and Infolob. Bulbul Apps builds innovative, multimedia, interactive apps for tablets, smartphones, and other touchscreen devices for pre-school students.
Bulbul Apps will use proceeds from the round of investment to build its B2B2C market, which it says is showing tremendous promise with an aim to serve a growing number of paid parents, subscribers.
“It is an exciting phase of growth as we discover new segments to grow our business. We have signed half a dozen franchisors and have a strong pipeline of clients with Kangaroo kids as the biggest customer. Our target is to go live in 300 plus schools this academic year with close to 50,000 parent subscriptions. We are also working with a leading vernacular organization in the US,” Prakash Dantuluri, Founder and CEO of Bulbulapps.com.
Bulbul Apps, which was also a part of Hyderabad-based startup engine T-Hub in its initial days, is now combining its content strength with preschool deployment experience to launch India’s first One Stop solution for Preschools called ‘My Preschool App’. According to Prakash, the app has been built using Bulbul Apps’ legacy interactive digital curriculum along with administrative, communication, safety and security features that are standard preschool requirements
"Early childhood education is crucial, and it is nice that both parents and Governments are waking up to it. This creates a huge untapped market potential. Bulbul is in a unique position to serve this market given its strength to create easy to absorb stories for the child. Bulbul has demonstrated how both parents & kids love its narratives and other cool features such as parent-teacher engagement. I am positive that Bulbul is poised to become the leading apps in the early learning space in India and in other countries,” Ajay Jain, Principal CoFounder of Xseed Partners said in a statement.
Each topic in the Bulbulapps digital learning curriculum offers, on average, 30 minutes of engagement and repeat interaction ranges from kids that come every single day, week and month. The app also has a parents feature which offers insights into their child’s progress with specific login provided by the school. It is currently focussed in India with plans to enter the US market in FY 2020.
Founded in 2015 by Prakash Dantuluri with a seed capital of $200k has raised another $1 million so far. Bulbul Apps has its own proprietary mobile first content creation engine and has created all the characters, voices, art, and the animation itself in its Hyderabad app studio consisting a team of 16 developers and 10 artists from around the world.
Bulbul Apps platform allows storytellers, artists, and academicians to converge and create high-quality cost-efficient content for children. In the future, the company wants to expand its reach to the home learning market and preschools around the world.