Scaler, an edtech startup that offers refresher courses for professionals working in India, has raised $55 million in a new round of funding as it looks to expand into international markets, including the US, the company based in India said. in Bengaluru on Tuesday.
Series B funding – led by Lightrock India – values the startup at $710 million, up from around $110 million two years ago. said Scaler. Existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global also participated in the round, which brings Scaler’s all-time increase to $76.5 million.
Funding comes a few months later climber received a $400 million buyout offer from Unacademy, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Scaler declined to comment on the purchase talks.
The startup started its journey as InterviewBit, an edtech offering that provides students with learning resources to do interviews. “InterviewBit has millions of users and is loved by techies.” said Abhimanyu Saxena, co-founder of Scaler, in an interview with Ploonge.
But the content alone is not adequate to guide each individual to prepare for the new job, he said. “For people deprived of the high-learning ecosystem, it’s very difficult for them to do a massive learning delta just by consuming content,” he said. “On a grassroots level, the service was not helping disadvantaged people.”
InterviewBit remains operational – in fact, it is one of the most popular interview prep apps in India – but Scaler is the eponymous branded offering of the startup today that is trying to tackle the broader challenge.
Scaler offers nine to 11 month courses for cohorts of working professionals. During this time, Scaler comprehensively teaches these individuals subjects that are designed to help them acquire the skills they need to get jobs and pursue new opportunities.
The startup today offers courses such as data science and machine learning. These resumes are designed in consultation with dozens of major tech employers, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Adobe, VMWare and Uber, Saxena said.
A course on the platform typically costs around $3,350 and individuals can pay the fee upfront or in installments by receiving credit from various non-bank financial institutions that Scaler has partnered with.
(There is no income-sharing arrangement at Scaler. Saxena argued that the income-sharing arrangement has some aspects that would harm its cohort members.)
At Scaler, individuals attend three to four live classes per week, complete assignments, and gain access to teaching assistants and mentors to answer questions and seek guidance. As part of Scaler’s offering, the startup also collaborates with companies to help its cohort members find and land the right jobs. “People are spending three hours or more on the Scaler every day,” he said.
Scaler’s ambition is to help the “big gap that exists between what college and other institutions are producing and what the tech industry demands,” he said. “People who join Scaler have worked in companies in the past. We are providing them with the skills that the Amazons and Googles of the world demand.”
Saxena said that as companies start hiring people globally, Scaler will help India shift the narrative from a place where you can hire engineers at lower salaries to a hub of highly skilled and globally competitive talent.
Saxena co-founded Scaler in 2019. (Image credits: Scaler)
“The failure of legacy institutions in India’s higher education sector, particularly in the IT space, has opened up opportunities for outspoken disruptors of the status quo such as Scaler to drive a new kind of thinking that goes beyond success based on cost arbitrage.” , he said.
India, home to over 250 million students who attend the school, produces around one million engineering graduates each year. Most of these individuals struggle to get jobs, let alone secure the shows they dreamed of.
Scaler is building a learning community that is “responsible for results and designed for the future of work,” Divya Venkatavaraghavan, principal investor in Lightrock India, said in a statement.
So far, about 15,000 individuals have signed up for Scaler and about 6,000 have completed the program. “96% of individuals who wanted to get a new job are now working at a tier 1 company,” he said, adding that the startup is still collecting data for the rest of the members and is working with one of the big auditing firms to do so. . .
More than 300 people have landed a job at Amazon, he said.
The startup, which is operationally profitable, plans to deploy the new funds to “aggressively experiment in new markets” in which it is expanding, he said, identifying the US as one of those markets. Scaler is also looking to acquire new startups, especially overseas, to boost its expansion, he said.
“For us, the most [Scaler’s] strategy is that they are super focused on teaching computer science of the highest quality, delivered with their own unique approach that makes their programs practical and useful in the workplace,” said Shailendra J. Singh, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore, in a statement.
“This is resulting in excellent student NPS and exceptional job placements for Scaler students. We couldn’t be more excited to travel alongside them to impact the lives of so many high-potential programmers.”