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Edtech firm LittleMore Innovation Labs, that is offering a disrupting option conducting university examinations with its paperless solutions, is looking to raise $10 million in Series B funding from new and existing investors.
Expected to close in the next five months, the fresh funding will be directed towards R&D, product development and expansion into new geographies in the Asia-Pacific region including Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, a top executive from the company told BusinessLine.
Incorporated in Singapore in 2011 by Srikanth Ganesan, with a development centre in Chennai, LittleMore has already raised $3 million in Series A from Kalpavriksh, a private equity fund of the Centrum Group in February last year.
“Twenty five million students write 250 million-plus exams in India alone. LittleMore’s managed solutions for universities including hardware (DigiTaal) and software (PEXA) are aimed at addressing the challenges in the entire process of examinations such as, security before and after the exam, lengthy cycle times, wastage of paper, malpractices like paper leaks, candidate impersonation and cheating, logistics across multiple locations, storage of answer scripts, transparency in the process, errors in tabulation/marking and woeful lack of data analytics,” said Biju Zachariah, President – India Business, LittleMore Innovation Labs.
DigiTaal, the company’s biometric-enabled device that took three years to design and develop, works without internet or power connectivity and has a battery life of 14 hours. The ergonomically-designed device with a palm rest, is anti-skid and its screen has a special coating that reduces glare and strain on the eyes. The student walks in to the exam hall and once authenticated by the device, reads the question paper and starts to write examinations with a stylus.
“We have conducted over 1 million paperless exams over the last three years without a single instance of data loss or stoppage and have signed two deals worth a total of $10 million in the last 60 days,” said Zachariah.
LittleMore serves Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Manipal University, IIIT-B, REVA University, VIT Vellore and NIMHANS, among others.
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