[Funding alert] Career discovery startup Mentoria raises Rs 1.5 Cr from Indian Angel Network, others

Mentoria, a career discovery platform that enables students and early working professionals to discover themselves and their ideal career paths, has raised Rs 1.5 crore in a pre-Series A round of funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN). 

The round also saw participation from marquee investors, including Jayant Mehrotra, who recently retired as CFO, Lodha Group, and Pradeep Jaisingh, Chairman, HealthStart India.

The freshly infused capital will be used by the Mumbai-based startup to scale up its technology and product, marketing efforts and build career communities on the platform. The startup is also looking at creating new products, gamifying their content and building customised information pathways that enable both students and working professionals to understand what it takes to get into their shortlisted/envisioned careers.

The Co-founder and CEO Nikhar Arora said, 

“Most students, in India and globally, end up in courses and careers they will later detest/be suboptimal in. We believe that India’s potential demographic dividend might turn into a disaster if square pegs continue being forced into round holes. No amount of skill development or education can solve the problem of people choosing the wrong career or education path. So, through Mentoria, we are on a quest to transform India and, eventually, the world by enabling millions of people to make informed and ideal career decisions.” 

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“We intend to create a platform that is the Google of Careers and we are glad to receive support from IAN and marquee investors who have become a part of our journey,” Nikhar added.

Launched in 2015 by Nikhar Arora along with his co-founders Dr Ashish Arora and Juie Divecha, Mentoria claims to have the 12,000+ career options available today. The platform leverages Artificial Intelligence to suggest a list of ideal career paths for a user based on their psychometric assessment results. This is followed by an online career counselling session with trained and certified career counsellors, and access to Mentoria’s Knowledge Gateway with information on 850+ different careers, 3,000+ colleges and universities and 100+ hours of mentorship content from experts and professionals across careers/industries. 

The mentors on Mentoria platform guide a user from the time they sign up until they step into a career they have either discovered or are passionate about.

“With over 12,000 career options available today and 800 million jobs forecasted to vanish by 2030 due to automation, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, it becomes overwhelming, extremely challenging and stressful for any individual to make his or her career choice. Using AI, Mentoria will play a game-changing role in mentoring and guiding millions to step into a career they’re passionate about,” added Jayant Mehrotra, Lead Investor at Indian Angel Network.

The startup has so far enabled over 81,000 students/working professionals, 50+ corporates including Axis Bank, Aditya Birla Capital, L&T Technology Services, and more as well as 50 schools to become career-ready.

The company saw a 4X growth over FY’20-21, despite the ongoing pandemic. They have also built a community of 250+ counsellors and 'counsellorpreneurs' — counsellors looking to build/scale their own business using Mentoria’s tools — through their mobile application.