Community-led live learning platform Growth School has roped in US-based private equity major Sequoia Capital India and edutech-focused investment firm Owl Ventures, who led a USD 5-million funding round along with over 70 angel investors.
The leading angels who participated in the seed funding round include entrepreneurs such as Kunal Shah and Nikhil Kamath as well as some international angels like Austen Allred who founded the Lamda School, said the startup. Growth School, which positions itself as a ‘university-on-the-cloud’, partners with top industry experts to create high-impact cohort-based courses on personal and professional growth for learners.
The platform brings in top mentors from companies like from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Swiggy etc who teach real, actionable and practical things that job-seekers can apply in the real world and all its programmes and workshops are co-created with the mentors to provide an exhaustive learning experience. The Bengaluru-based startup founded in 2020, as a bootstrapped firm with a six-member team, plans to use the fund to expand its team and build a robust tech platform apart from venturing into newer markets and also explore metaverse for education or a university-on-the-cloud, Vaibhav Sisinty, the founder of Growth School told PTI.
Sisinty, however, refused to share details of equity dilution for the USD 5 million funding. Till date, close to 2 lakh users have accessed Growth School’s courses which include performance marketing, how to become a freelance, how to build and sell your NFT, how to invest in cryptos, how to start a D2C business etc, he said, adding it follows a ‘pay-per-programme’ with fees ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 35,000 depending on course and duration.
Sisinty said unlike its larger rivals like upGrad, the platform does not offer degrees or job placements. He further said that even at such a low fee structure, the company is already profitable and is debt free. Sequoia India has partnered with founders of Byju’s, Carousell, Druva, Gojek, Oyo Rooms, Tokopedia, Truecaller, Zilingo, Zomato and many more, while the Silicon Valley-based Owl Ventures is the world’s largest venture capital fund focused on the education technology with over USD 2 billion in AUM.
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