[Funding alert] Health education platform Virohan raises $2.8M across Seed and Series A rounds

Gurugram-based health education startup Virohan Pvt Ltd on Monday announced that it had raised $2.8 million across Seed and Series A funding rounds. As part of the total fund raise, the Seed round was led by Keiretsu Forum and Series A round was led by the Elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalisation, and by the Singh Family Trusts, advised by Artha Impact, with participation from founders and National Skill Development Corporation.

In a media release, the startup added that the fresh investment round will enable Virohan to continue introducing and expanding new virtual technologies in the vocational training segment — allowing for greater accessibility, scalability, and immersion at affordable costs. Specifically, the company will also use the funding to expand their content library by introducing standardised content to students in 15 additional languages and growing its partnerships from dozens to hundreds of institutions. Virohan’s vision is to educate more than a million students by 2025 through its learning platform.

“Workforce readiness is a huge problem in India. There is a huge disconnect between demand and supply of the skills in the workforce across sectors forcing youth to compromise on aspirations, income and location. We are thrilled to have the support of our incredible investors as we build the most efficient and scalable learning platform for current and future healthcare professionals,” the startup founders said in a joint statement.

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A training partner of NSDC and a Yunus Social Business investee company, Virohan said it works with GE Healthcare and the Indian Medical Association (IMA) among others across India to provide the youth with a career in the healthcare sector and make trained workforce available to the industry.

The startup was incorporated in 2018 by the founders, Kunaal Dudeja (Co-founder and CEO), Nalin Saluja (Co-founder and CTO), and Archit Jayaswal (Co-founder and CFO). Virohan bridges the gap between industry demand and the skills of the workforce by using its ‘technology skill stack’ through which it predicts job demand for each job role across India, builds out the curriculum needed, and delivers training through blended and online learning.

The courses emphasise on development of core technical skills, language abilities, and life skills in the student through gamified blended learning delivered by its facilitators in classrooms or purely online on its myCareer app. All programmes include long internships at hospitals for hands-on practice of the skills acquired. Virohan is a fee-based model, and in order to encourage young people to join, financial linkages are provided with easy instalment-based payback options after a job is secured by the users.

As part of the previous round, the company had also raised debt funding worth $270,000 from Yunus Social Business in January 2020.

Virohan claims to have trained over 3,000 students and has a placement rate of over 85 percent. The edtech startup is rapidly expanding its national footprint ever since the lockdown began. It has already started its training completely online, while expanding its presence to over 20 cities in the last five months.