Hyderabad|India|January'2009: FDouble Dhamaka! Celebrations for the New year at the India based startup and the first incubated company of the prestigious BITS, Pilani – BridleIT - with "The Chennai Fund" playing the Santa Clause and funding the growth plans for SchoolMATE.

In an exciting business plan contest when angel investors of the 'Chennai Fund', started by Charter members of TiE Chennai Chapter, comprising Suresh Kalpathi (SSI, Aptech, Kalpathi Investments) , R Ramaraj (Sify, Sequoia), K B Chandrasekhar (e4e, Jamcracker), Gopal Srinivasan (TVS), Raghu Rajagopal (Energeate) and Ram Mohan (Afilias) – chose to invest in the education startup that offers SchoolMATE, the young spirited entrepreneurs Ravindra Vytla and Hari Krishnan knew their focused efforts in simplifying technology and bringing it to the common man's hands(quite literally) were in the right direction.

The mobile focus that this young company believes in, has proved very true, with the company's flagship service SchoolMATE (CRM + ERP for Educational Institutes), a smash hit among Parents and Schools and Colleges of the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Over 70,000 Parents in the cities of Hyderabad and Vishakapatnam (Vizag), have been enjoying the services of SchoolMATE, benefiting with quick info about their child from their schools right on their mobile phones.

SchoolMATE is a two-way platform where Parents can as well interact with schools in a simple way. SchoolMATE is offered to the institutes as a Managed Service in the SaaS model, with no upfront investment - reducing the operating costs for the institute, freeing up the staff and teachers from routine paperwork, and helping the top management get full informational control for key decision making in areas like student performance, teacher performance, analysis of financial information, staff payroll, timetable, attendance etc.

This simple SMS based service, along with the essential ERP benefits for the educational institutes is proving to be of great value to its customers.

In the large market of education and ubiquitous mobile phones, a service like SchoolMATE has a huge potential in a country like India. SchoolMATE, currently with 100+ employees in 2 cities, is launching the service in five new cities including Chennai and Bangalore, and aims to touch the lives of 7 million Parents across 55 cities in the next 5 years.

Raghu Rajagopal from Chennai Fund joins Chandrasekhar Kopparapu (Investor and Mentor – SchoolMATE and VP - APAC, Foundry Networks) on the Board of Directors - both incidentally alumni of BITS Pilani, with over 15 years of top management experience each in various industries. With the guidance of its board members, investors and mentors the young company is sure to scale greater heights.
 

Reachout's News Bureau
 January' 2009