Skill-Lync, India's largest edtech startup for engineering, has raised $17.5 million in a funding round led by Iron Pillar, a venture growth investor backing global tech companies built from India.
Existing investors Y Combinator and Better Capital also participated in the Series A round. Binny Bansal, a cofounder of Flipkart; Sai Krishnamurthy who worked with Flipkart once; and Rashmi Kwatra, founder of Sixteenth Street Capital joined as new investors.
Skill-Lync provides courses in mechanical, electrical, civil and computer science engineering domains. It was launched in April 2018 by Suryanarayanan P (CEO) and Sarangarajan V (CTO).
The rapid adoption of new technologies by industries has created a need for the constant upskilling of engineering professionals, said Suryanarayanan P, cofounder and CEO of Skill-Lync.
“Hence, the need of the hour is to have engineers who have knowledge of both engineering fundamentals and how they can be applied to solve real-world engineering problems through engineering design and simulation tools,” said Suryanarayanan.
Skill-Lync has created content that matches the present and future requirements of industries. “We believe that our partnership with Iron Pillar will allow us to tap into Iron Pillar’s network of global experts and help us accelerate towards our goal of building an alternate platform for engineering education,” said Suryanarayanan.
Anand Prasanna, managing partner, Iron Pillar, said engineering education and upskilling outside of computer science have seen very little digital disruption over the last two decades. This, combined with the ever-expanding need for real-world interdisciplinary applications of engineering in today’s world creates a unique opportunity to establish a multi-billion dollar global company with deep moats in this space.
“This is also a strong beachhead for expansion into multiple adjacent areas,” said Prasanna.
“We will double down on developing corporate partnerships to understand future talent requirements, build in-house high-end engineering teams to offer excellent learning outcomes to our students,” said Sarangarajan V Iyengar, cofounder of Skill-Lync.
The startup has collaborated with over 800 industry experts for creating their course content and has full-time people with extensive experience in the industry. These include firms such as Bosch, Cummins, ABB, Samsung and Accenture to provide students with learning experience.
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