Ritesh Singh Chandel, CEO
Sonu Kumar Prashant, CTO
& Rushabh Kothari, COO
Co-founders, Arivihan
(29, 29 & 28)
Growing up in Indore, Ritesh Singh Chandel and Rushabh Kothari saw coaching centres at every street corner, yet access to quality teaching remained out of reach. So they set out to build what didn’t exist: An infinitely scalable AI tutor that could teach any student, in any town, in their own language, at the cost of a monthly phone recharge.
“I grew up in a tier 2 city and struggled to find a great teacher who could teach at my pace, in my language, and at a cost my family could afford,” Chandel says. “A ‘good teacher’ often meant high fees, long travel, or settling for whatever was available. For my JEE preparation, my dad and sisters put in all their savings, and only then could I join a good coaching institute.” Years later, whenever the two visited home, they would see the same reality.
The duo, along with their batchmate from IIT Roorkee Sonu Kumar Prashant, founded Arivihan in 2021. While most other edtech platforms either stream live classes—making it human-dependent—or offer static videos, Arivihan has a fully automated GenAI tutor that teaches, listens, and adapts in real time. “Every few minutes, AI asks a question, the student answers, and the path changes based on understanding. If students get stuck, they can ask any query in their language,” says Chandel. “Regional languages are a big challenge, which we believe can only be solved using AI, at scale.”
The platform is live in tier 3 and 4 cities in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, with Hindi and English, focusing on imparting coaching for Class 12 state boards and NEET. The founders, in July 2025 raised $4.17 million in a Pre-Series A round led by Prosus and Accel to expand to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh. From the next academic year, they are gearing up to launch Bengali and Marathi. “Most offline classes would cost upwards of ₹20,000, whereas we charge ₹3,000 for the entire programme, for all subjects. It is a freemium model, where a few chapters are free and the rest is paid content,” says Chandel.
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“We partnered with Arivihan because the founders demonstrated a blend of visible mission orientation and strong AI skills. They are ex-IITians and educators whose life’s resolve is to democratise quality education for every student in India,” says Anagh Prasad, investor, Accel.
Chandel claims Arivihan it is on the path to profitability, thanks to its AI-led model, which reduces operational costs. The startup sold around 15,000 subscriptions in the last academic year, and clocked a turnover of ₹3.2 crore.
For all the talk about AI, their toughest challenge was far more basic: Making the product work on low-end phones and erratic 4G networks. “In tier 2 and 3 regions, many students use low-end phones, unstable data connections, and study in short, irregular slots,” he says. So they rebuilt things that were lightweight, fast, and reliable on weak networks. The second hurdle was trust. “Parents don’t buy ‘features’; they buy trust and real value,” Chandel says. Proof through outcomes, not marketing, became the playbook.
In the next five years, he believes vernacular AI will make “one personal tutor for every learner” real, in any language, on any device, at any location.
First Published: Jan 08, 2026, 11:38
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