From MBA To GenAI: Stoa Makes Hard Pivot To Enterprise Agent ‘Zeus’

Bengaluru-based Stoa, the poster child of alternative MBA courses, is piloting a new AI-based enterprise agent platform called Zeus. 

The startup claims that Zeus is an organisation alignment platform that helps companies “build focus and momentum” for their team, but by all indications, it is an AI enterprise agent that automates workflows and tasks for large teams. 

While not much information is available on the website, Stoa cofounders Aditya Kulkarni and Raj Kunkolienkar have teased the new product on LinkedIn for several weeks now. While Kulkarni called Zeus a CEO’s best friend, Kunkolienkar said it is an “AI Chief of Staff”.

Their posts indicate that Zeus is an app built into the email inbox. Users can ask questions or seek suggestions for particular tasks, and Zeus is meant to respond with appropriate actions or answers, as is the case with other agents and enterprise chatbots. 

As per Kunkolienkar’s post, Zeus is launching with a wide set of features that cover tasks such as minutes of meetings, work assignment, research and more.  

• Send personalised emails to people in the organisation after meetings, even if they haven’t attended the meeting
• Can take instructions over the call and dispatch work to people
• Do internet research on topics discussed
• Draft documents/mails
• Brainstorm and come up with solutions
• Ask for elaboration on points
• Relay messages to others

Inc42 could not get more clarity from Stoa about Zeus despite multiple attempts to contact the founders. Currently, Stoa is accepting early-access applications for Zeus.

Stoa School, billed as an alternative to traditional MBA courses or B schools, continues to coexist with Zeus, but the dates for the next cohort are not yet available. It’s not clear whether Stoa will run both verticals going forward. 

Incidentally, The Ken reported earlier this year that Stoa shut its MBA school operations as it failed to fill up the last cohort. Cofounder and CEO Kulkarni said at the time that the startup had only pressed pause on operations and was reevaluating its next steps.

“We will not accept any more students for the foreseeable future. Within 6–8 weeks, we will announce the next form factor that Stoa School will shape into,” he said at the time. No further updates have come since then. 

Riding The AI Boom

Founded in 2020 by Kulkarni, Raj Kunkolienkar, and Manoj Kambadur, Stoa has served over 1,500 students across 15 cohorts. 

It reported a revenue of INR 15.9 Cr in FY23, a 160.6% jump from INR 6.1 Cr in FY22. It also managed to narrow its loss by 43.8% to INR 43.9 Lakh from INR 78.2 Lakh in FY22. It’s not clear how Stoa performed in FY24 as the startup is yet to file its financials. 

Stoa’s pivot to an AI agent or chatbot is unsurprising given the current Gen AI boom. As enterprises and individuals adopt AI and machine learning tools to automate tasks, reduce human error and increase efficiency, a number of Indian startups are building AI-based products. These startups are also receiving a lot of interest from investors.

Stoa raised $1.5 Mn in seed funding in late 2021 and is backed by marquee investors such as Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath, CRED’s Kunal Shah, Udemy’s Gagan Biyani, Myntra’s Raveen Sastry, among others. 

Stoa competes against the likes of Masters’ Union, Invact Metaversity, Mesa School of Business, among others. Besides this, edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah has also entered the space with its Institute Of Innovation, which offers MBA-like courses.