A Personal Tutor for Everybody: Our investment in Arivihan

Benjamin Bloom's seminal 1984 study on instructional methods introduced the "Two Sigma Problem," now one of the most recognized concepts in education theory worldwide. This influential research demonstrated through experiments that one-on-one tutoring enables the average student to perform two standard deviations (sigma) above the classroom average. The Two Sigma study's power lies in its intuitive clarity. Across nations and societies, personal tutoring is a clear preference for anyone who can afford it. Yet, owing to obvious scalability-related challenges, education is dominated by the classroom teaching method centuries after its introduction.

India, home to 250M+ actively enrolled students, is particularly characterised by unusually large class sizes - predictable for a country with a teacher-to-student ratio of less than 1:200, and where excelling at standardised tests is often the only path to upward financial mobility. Even among the most recent attempts at disruption (edtech), static content and occasional one-to-many interactions dominate all viable business models. The market opportunity for personalizing test prep has always been clear (and large!) in India. Still, the advent of GenAI presents the first clear technology cycle that gives us a shot at implementing Bloom's theory at scale.

That is why we are excited to announce our partnership with Arivihan—an AI-native edtech company that has been quietly proving the efficacy of AI tutors at scale in Tier 2 & beyond India for over 2 years. We first met Ritesh, Rushabh, and Sonu at their unassuming Indore office in late 2023, when we had just launched intake for the first Accel Atoms-AI batch. Every aspect of the company —from building a multimodal interface in vernacular languages from the outset, to solving complex ML engineering problems that can create enough gross margins at market-suited price points, to recruiting an early team whose backgrounds reflect their target user base - spoke of their mission statement, which is to democratize access to high-quality education for all students.

With less than $1M in cumulative funding before this round, Arivihan has already broken out as the #1 education app for high school students in Madhya Pradesh, their first target state. It is now rapidly expanding to cover other state-specific and national standardized tests. We are delighted to renew our commitment to Arivihan's mission by co-leading a $4.5M funding round alongside Prosus Ventures. We wish them all the best as they bring the long-awaited promise of tech-enabled personalization to every student!