Beyond Odds Technologies raises $11M led by Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed
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Bengaluru, Thursday, 18th April 2024: Beyond Odds Technologies, founded by former OYO and Unacademy senior executive Vivek Sinha, announced their seed investment of $11 million led by Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed, to build an employability-led training, certification, and recruitment platform for grey collared workforce. Other investors that participated in the round included InnoVen Capital (a Temasek subsidiary) and Alteria Capital. The company is also backed by reputed angel investors including Ritesh Agarwal (Founder, OYO), Gaurav Munjal (Founder, Unacademy), Mayank Kumar (Founder, Upgrad), Ramakant Sharma (Founder, Livspace), Abhishek Goyal (Founder, Tracxn), Rohit MA (Founder, CloudNine Hospitals), Sumer Juneja (Managing Partner, SoftBank), Puneet Kumar (Managing Director, Steadview Capital), and Abhinav Sinha (COO, OYO).
The company aims to solve for the shortage of skilled labour-force in key nation-building sectors such as healthcare, education, hospitality, and construction. The platform will train candidates at scale and with high standards through programs that include ‘hands-on’ training with industry partners. In addition to tech-enabled training, it will also open physical centres to help create a ‘job-ready’ talent pool.
The company’s higher education brand, ‘Emversity’, is launching its first centre in Bangalore on 20th April, followed by six other centres this quarter in cities including Hyderabad, Delhi, Nagpur, Kochi, and Ranchi. In partnership with top-rated universities, these centres will facilitate Bachelor's degrees as well as certification courses. In the current academic cycle, Emversity will offer courses like UG Programs in Emergency & Trauma Care Technology, Anaesthesia & Operation Theatre Technology, Medical Laboratory Technology, Hospital Administration, and Certification Programs in Phlebotomy, Nursing Assistant, and Dialysis Technology. The state-of-the-art campuses are equipped with smart classrooms, laboratories, and virtual reality simulation.
For their first cohort, Emversity has tied up with several leading healthcare institutions, such as Fortis Hospitals, Core Diagnostics, etc., to offer programs that are tailored to meet the skill requirements of these institutions, and the same institutions will also be the recruiting partners for full-time jobs as well as internships for Emversity’s students.
Outlining his broader vision, Founder & CEO Vivek Sinha said, “Our platform will address the shortages in skilled workforce in both domestic and global markets by creating high-quality supply from India. Our first initiative, ‘Emversity,’ is a higher education brand that helps universities integrate their degrees with industry-relevant skills. Our courses also come with ‘built-in income’, so candidates do not have to wait for completion of their formal higher education to earn their first pay cheque. Other features of these courses include ‘work abroad integrated’ modules, and extensive placement assistance.”
Talking about the sectoral focus, Sinha added: “In the current academic year, we will be focusing on offering undergraduate courses in allied health sciences. The sector is facing an acute shortage of 7 lakh skilled workers. Globally, the healthcare sector will see a shortage of 1 crore skilled workers by 2030”.
Commenting on the investment, Rajat Agarwal, Managing Director at Matrix Partners India said “To achieve India's goal of becoming a developed economy by 2047, harnessing our demographic dividend is essential. Emversity is dedicated to preparing India's youth for the workforce and fostering the growth of sunrise industries through scalable skilled manpower. With our longstanding acquaintance with Vivek, we commend his grasp of the issue and capacity to establish pioneering institutions. We extend our best wishes to the Emversity team for their journey ahead.”
Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed said “Today, India experiences a unique situation where we have an expanding workforce supply but a talent and skills gap across industries. Beyond Odds recognises and aims to tackle these limitations of the current education system. By enabling vocational skills-based education among students in partnership with public and private partnerships, they're solving both the demand and supply problems in college education today.”
About Beyond Odds:
‘Beyond Odds Technologies’ is an employability-led, technology-enabled platform that recruits, trains, certifies, and deploys candidates for grey collar job roles in nation-building industries like healthcare, education, construction, and hospitality. The platform brings employers from across the globe on the ‘demand’ side, and then matches the demand with talent ‘supply’ from India. The platform partners with reputed universities and international accreditation and certification bodies to improve employability and global opportunities for candidates.
The platform also runs the higher education brand ‘Emversity’, which works with reputed universities to offer bachelor’s degree programs in the allied health sciences stream, such as Medical Laboratory Technology, Operation Theatre Technology, Emergency Medical Technology, Hospital Administration, Medical Imaging Technology, and Dialysis Technology. Apart from a cutting-edge learning platform equipped with high-quality content created with ‘employer partners’ and industry practitioners, Emversity also owns state-of-the art physical campuses that are equipped with smart classrooms, laboratories, and virtual reality simulation. The programs are practice-oriented and hence allow the students to earn stipend as well as industry-relevant experience during the programs. Website Link: https://www.emversity.com/
About Matrix Partners India:
Founded in 2006, Matrix Partners India invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market, and has invested in several category-leading companies such as Dailyhunt (Local language platform), Five Star Business Finance (SME Lending), OfBusiness (B2B commerce, fintech), Ola (Mobility), Ola Electric (Electric Vehicles), OneCard (Mobile-first credit card), Oxyzo (Tech-enabled smart financing), Razorpay (Payments), Captain Fresh (B2B seafood marketplace), Country Delight (D2C dairy & fresh foods brand), GoKwik (E-commerce enablement platform), Jupiter (Neobank), MoEngage (Customer engagement platform), Stanza Living (Tech-enabled student housing platform), Zupee (Skill-based gaming), Dezerv(Wealth management), Classplus / Testbook (Test prep. & online education) and Toddle (Education software) among others. Matrix Partners India has advisory offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in. To know more about our investment philosophy & ideologies, check out the #MatrixMoments podcast series.
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