This AI Tutor Just Beat 1.3 Million UPSC Aspirants — and Just Raised $9.5M to Revolutionize Education
New Delhi, April 7, 2025 — A silent revolution is underway in the world of education, and it just got a $9.5 million boost.
Meet SigIQ.ai, the stealth-mode AI startup that’s making headlines for all the right reasons. Backed by The House Fund, GSV Ventures, Duolingo, Peak XV Partners, and an all-star roster of angels from Berkeley, MIT, and Princeton, SigIQ.ai isn’t just another EdTech story. It’s a moonshot in the making.
Why? Because their AI tutor, PadhAI, just aced the 2024 UPSC exam—India’s notoriously difficult civil service test—outscoring over 1.3 million human candidates and outperforming even commercial AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude.
🧠 From Stealth to Spotlight
SigIQ.ai emerged from stealth mode after 18 months of hard-core R&D. Co-founded by Dr. Karttikeya Mangalam, a Berkeley AI PhD mentored by computer vision legend Prof. Jitendra Malik, the startup has launched two powerful AI tools:
PadhAI – A UPSC-focused AI tutor now used by over 200,000 aspirants in India.
EverTutor.ai – A GRE prep AI platform that’s clocked 10,000+ users in 3 months.
💡 The Vision: One Tutor for Every Student
“We’ve built a tutor that can top the very exam it’s teaching. That’s the baseline for quality,” says Dr. Mangalam. “With GenAI, we’re making elite education accessible, personalized, and affordable.”
SigIQ.ai is solving the legendary Bloom’s Two Sigma Problem — the observation that students tutored one-on-one outperform their classroom peers by 2 standard deviations. Historically, such tutoring has been too expensive to scale. GenAI changes that game forever.
📈 What the $9.5M Seed Round Means
This isn’t just about raising capital. It’s about redefining what’s possible in learning.
The funding will be used to:
Scale AI models and platforms in India-first markets
Develop multilingual and regional language support
Hire top-tier engineering and growth teams
Launch new tutoring modules for GRE, JEE, and state-level exams
And they’re not alone. Investors are calling it the future.
“This isn’t your average EdTech play. They’ve publicly proven their AI can outperform both humans and major models. That’s a tectonic shift,” says Jeremy Fiance, Managing Director at The House Fund.
🌍 What’s Next?
SigIQ.ai is preparing for a full-stack showcase at ASU+GSV, where it will unveil next-gen features of both PadhAI and EverTutor.ai. The vision? To become the “Duolingo meets Khan Academy” of GenAI-powered education.
With global investor backing, academic brainpower, and a product already reshaping competitive exam prep, SigIQ.ai might just be the first Indian AI startup to build a true global EdTech unicorn.
