[Funding alert] Edtech startup AttainU raises angel funding from ex-Google India Head, others

AttainU, a Bengaluru-based edtech startup providing live online courses as college alternative to individuals, has raised an undisclosed sum in angel funding from investors including Shailesh Rao ex-Google India Head, Nikhil Rungta ex-Intuit India Head, Anil Gelra - Founder, SnapMint and  Manish Kumar - Founder, KredX and LetsVenture. 

The raised funding will be used to further strengthen faculty, development of courses, counselling teams, and build a semi-automated platform to cater to the huge inbound student demand AttainU is receiving, the startup stated. 

Divyam Goel, CEO & Co-founder, AttainU, said, 

"For us, the goal has always been about solving higher education in a systematic, scalable way. From the beginning, we have had a very strong focus on maintaining our high-quality learning outcomes as we scale. Over the last 10 months, we have been able to figure out many processes, complementing human psychology, to facilitate deep-rooted learning.” 

“At this point, we are receiving double-digit thousand student applications every month and are very excited about the scale of impact we will be able to deliver through our tech-first approach," he added.

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Founded by Divyam Goel and Vaibhav Bajpai in 2018, AttainU currently offers full-time, online seven-month-long software engineering courses for users. 

The startup provides career counselling as part of their student assessment process and connects graduates to industry partners for placement upon completion of the course. AttainU aims to serve students who have a college education but don’t have a job or a satisfactory job and more importantly, don't need to have prior coding experience. 

The company said its courses are focussed on industry-aligned practical skills and professionally required life skills and follow a deferred fee payment model conditional to employment aka Income Share Agreement (ISA). 

Commenting on the angel round, Nikhil Rungta, ex-Intuit India MD, said, 

"Over 60 percent of the engineering students who pass out every year are either unemployed or are stuck in unrelated jobs. If we go beyond engineers, this problem multiplies 10 times. I feel the team at AttainU has identified this huge unsolved problem and are trying to solve it in a tech-first, structured and scalable way." 

According to AttainU, every year approximately nine million students graduate from colleges, out of which 85 percent don’t make it to well paying, white collar jobs. Data states that 50 percent of all BE/Btech graduates and 60 percent of all MBA (including PG Diploma) graduates are still considered not employable by tech first organisations.

“The team at AttainU has identified this huge unsolved problem and are trying to solve it in a tech-first, structured and scalable way. 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,” added Nikhil.

(Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar)

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