Former Unacademy COO Vivek Sinha announced the launch of his new venture, ‘Beyond Odds Technologies’, with a seed investment of $11 million led by Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed, to build an employability-led training, certification, and recruitment platform for the gray-collar workforce.
Other investors participating in the round include InnoVen Capital (a Temasek subsidiary) and Alteria Capital. The company is also backed by 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).
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The company aims to solve the shortage of skilled labour 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 April 20, 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 and Trauma Care Technology, Anaesthesia and 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 simulations.
For their first cohort, Emversity has tied up with several 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.
Vivek Sinha, Founder and CEO, said, “Our platform will address the shortages of skilled workers in both domestic and global markets by creating high-quality supply from India.”
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.”
