Srikanth
India’s largest engineering focused edtech start-up Skill-Lync, has raised US $17.5 Million in Series A round, led by Iron Pillar, a venture growth investor backing global tech companies built from India. Existing investors Y Combinator and Better Capital also participated in this funding round. In addition, Binny Bansal (Co-founder of Flipkart), Sai Krishnamurthy (ex-Flipkart; Co-founder of Xto10X) and Rashmi Kwatra (Founder of Sixteenth Street Capital) joined as new investors.
Skill-Lync provides job leading industry-relevant courses in the Mechanical, Electrical, Civil and Computer Science Engineering domains for students in India and other parts of the world. Interdisciplinary and job-oriented courses in topics such as Electric Vehicle Design, Embedded Systems design, Autonomous Vehicle, Renewable Energy, Full-Stack Development, Data Analytics and Construction Project Management, ensure the alignment of the engineering talent pool with the needs of these industries. Given its specialized digital delivery model, the platform has the highest course completion rates in these course categories. The capital raised will be used to increase the number of courses offered by Skill-Lync, build out next level of strong management team and expand the business to international markets.
The startup has collaborated with 800+ Industry experts for creating their existing course content and has full-time people with extensive experience in Industry (with the likes of Bosch, Cummins, ABB, Samsung and Accenture etc.) to provide the students a world-class learning experience.
Suryanarayanan P, Co-Founder and CEO, Skill-Lync, said, “The ever increasing gap between what industries expect and what students learn during their engineering education has caused a global shortage of high-quality engineering talent. The rapid adoption of new technologies by industries has also created a need for constant upskilling of engineering professionals. Hence, the need of the hour is to have engineers who have knowledge of both engineering fundamentals and how they can be applied to solve real world engineering problems through engineering design and simulation tools. Skill-Lync’s ability to understand the demands of the industry through our deep industry partnerships and expert network, has allowed us to create technical content that matches the present and future requirements of industries across the globe. We believe that our partnership with Iron Pillar will allow us to tap into Iron Pillar’s network of global experts and help us accelerate towards our goal of building an alternate platform for engineering education. We are also thankful to our existing investors Y Combinator and Better Capital for their continued trust in our mission.”
“SKILL-LYNC will double down on developing corporate partnerships to understand future talent requirements, build in-house high-end engineering teams to offer excellent learning outcomes to our students.” Added Sarangarajan V Iyengar, Co-Founder, Skill-Lync.
Anand Prasanna, Managing Partner, Iron Pillar, said, “Engineering education and upskilling outside of Computer Science have seen very little digital disruption over the last two decades. This, combined with the ever-expanding need for real world interdisciplinary applications of engineering in today’s world creates a unique opportunity to establish a multi $ Billion global company with deep moats in this space. This is also a strong beachhead for expansion into multiple adjacent areas. Surya, Sarang and rest of the Skill-Lync team have already built a great product and significant revenue in the business, with exceptional growth and capital efficiency. We feel privileged to have the opportunity to partner with them in this journey.”
