This former Uber India executive is now building a startup that offers extra-curricular activities for children

• Husband-wife duo Bhavik Rathod and Tripti Ahuja launched Kyt on September 30, 2020. Kyt is an online academy that leverages technology to open a whole world of extra-curricular courses to kids.
• In just two months, the startup has raised $2.5 million and is a part of Sequoia’s accelerator program – Surge.
• Before launching Kyt, Rathod worked with Uber and was, in fact, one of the first founding members of the India business who then went on to lead the UberEats business.

Husband-wife duo Bhavik Rathod and Tripti Ahuja, in the middle of lockdown, were looking for extra-curricular activities for their daughter, only to find there were not many options. This led to the birth of their entrepreneurial venture – Kyt.

Launched on September 30, 2020, Kyt is an online academy that leverages technology to open a whole world of extra-curricular courses to kids. In just two months, the startup has raised $2.5 million and is a part of Sequoia’s accelerator program – Surge. The funding round also saw participation from Titan Capital, and other angel investors, including Kunal Shah, Amrish Rau, Jitender Gupta, Allen Penn and Martin Li.

Over the last two months, they have over 1000 students enrolled in different courses. “The platform has more than 20 teachers onboard, and we plan to increase this to 500 over the next 12 months,” Rathod told Business Insider.

Before launching Kyt, Rathod worked with Uber and was, in fact, one of the first founding members of the India business and went on to lead the UberEats business.

While building Kyt, Rathod and Ahuja spoke to over 350 parents and understood that the need for such a platform was paramount. And Rathod is quite confident that amidst the roaring edtech growth in the country and the obvious growing competition, there is a huge space for extra-curricular activities that is currently not being tapped. “When you look at extra-curricular activities, there aren’t many players offering curriculum-driven courses, with teachers who have years of experience and are experts in their field,” he said.

Kyt has celebrated teachers like Indian Chess Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi, Philippines’ hip-hop legend Ruel Varindani, and celebrity yoga instructor Sabrina Merchant among others. The platform offers courses like yoga, language, reading, and dance, and will soon be launching chess as well.

Edtech has seen an enormous boom during the coronavirus pandemic and Rathod believes that the need for such a platform goes beyond it. "We intend to keep it online only as we believe the need is beyond the pandemic. There will be rapid adoption of online learning even beyond Covid-19, as these well-structured curriculums will build strong global communities, encouraging children to remain engaged over time,” he said.

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