Niche, the US-based operator of an online platform that supplies information on education providers, secured $35m in series C funding yesterday from investors including enterprise software producer Salesforce.
Growth equity firm Radian Capital led the round, which included boutique investment firm Allen & Company and private investor Tim Armstrong. Salesforce participated through its corporate venturing subsidiary, Salesforce Ventures.
Founded in 2002 as College Prowler, Niche originally operated an online store selling college guidebooks, but has since pivoted to a search engine that collects data on schools from kindergarten to university.
The platform enables parents and prospective students to identify the best school for their needs when taking school districts into account, and locate higher education options further afield.
Users can manage applications through the platform while schools use can use it to handle recruitment. Niche has partnerships with more than 1,400 education providers including Carnegie Mellon University and private school operator Harvard Westlake School.
The series C financing will support the company as it seeks partnerships with thousands of additional schools. Weston Gaddy of Radian Capital and Francisco D’Souza, co-founder and executive vice-chairman of IT services provider Cognizant, have joined its board of directors.
Niche closed an $8.6m series B round in February 2019 when Tim Armstrong added $2m to a $6.6m tranche supplied by Allen & Company and Grit Capital a year earlier. The company had previously raised a total of approximately $2.2m in funding, according to securities filings.
