AttainU Raises Seed Funds To Challenge Pesto, Unacademy In Edtech Space

Bengaluru-based edtech startup AttainU has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from multiple investors. This includes Shailesh Rao ex-Google India Head, Nikhil Rungta ex-Intuit India Head, Anil Gelra, founder, SnapMint and Manish Kumar, founder, KredX and LetsVenture.

AttainU said it will use the funds to strengthen faculty, development of courses, counselling teams and build a semi-automated platform.

What Does AttainU Do?

Founded in 2018 by Divyam Goel and Vaibhav Bajpai, AttainU offers live online courses. At present, it offers full-time, online seven-month long software engineering courses for users looking to get into software engineering careers.

The company also provides career counselling as part of their student assessment process and connects graduates to industry partners for placement upon completion of the course.

AttainU courses are focussed on industry-aligned practical skills and professionally required life skills and follow a deferred fee payment model conditional to employment via income share agreement (ISA).

Divyam Goel, CEO and cofounder, AttainU, said that at this point, the company is receiving double-digit thousand student applications every month.

Nikhil Rungta, ex Intuit India MD, said, “Divyam and Vaibhav have been able to put together a good team which not only has domain expertise but is also passionate about solving this huge problem. A good proof of demand is that they have secured in-principle hiring commitments from some very well known startups like Delhivery, Grofers, 1mg, Housing and MakeMyTrip.”

Increasing Competition In Skilling To Employment Startups

There are 5 Mn software engineers in India and the average salary for an Indian engineer is somewhere between $6,600 (entry level) and $11,400 (senior level) per annum irrespective of the type of employment i.e. full time or on outsourced projects.

The overall post-college skilling market in India was pegged at $370 Mn this year and the market for post-college tech skilling in India stands at $180 Mn in 2019, growing at almost 50% annually.

Every year approximately 9 Mn students graduate from colleges, out of which 85% don’t make it to well paying, white collar jobs. Data states that 50% of all BE/B.Tech graduates and 60% of all MBA(including PG Diploma) graduates are still considered not employable by tech first organisations.

Only a fraction of the 1.5 Mn engineering graduates who graduate in India every year come from top engineering colleges such as IITs. While the quality of engineering education in India is debatable, the curriculum is certainly not in keeping with the latest technologies. Upskilling students is a major challenge for Indian companies and training is often a difficult and cost-intensive task.

In the past few years, several startups have gravitated towards this gap and there’s been plenty of innovation too. HRtech startups such as HackerRank, HackerEarth, Codlity as well as edtech startups such as Udemy, Pesto, Unacademy, upGrad are some of the notable names moving to upskill India’s engineers and entry-level workers.

In May, Pesto raised $2 Mn in its first round of funding led by Matrix Partners, with participation of a group of angel investors including — Swiggy founders, Sriharsha Majety, Rahul Jaimini and Nandan Reddy; Innov8 founder Dr. Ritesh Malik; Posist founder Ashish Tulsian and OIC Capital’s Jack Yeung.

In June, Unacademy raised $50 Mn mammoth funding round from Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. The funds were to be used to onboard more educators, fuel growth across multiple exam categories and build a world-class product and team.

Indian edtech segment is expected to be a $1.96 Bn market by 2021. According to DataLabs by Inc42, there were 3,500 edtech startups in India in 2018. Between 2014-H1 2019, edtech startups have raised $1.27 Bn across 287 deals.