Mission is to become India’s largest outcome-driven learning platform
Mumbai, 26th October, 2021 – In a rare and unique strategic investment round, a total of 21 angel investors from the Indian startup ecosystem participated and invested an undisclosed amount in Masai School, the career-focused alternative education startup.
The list of investors include some of the most notable leaders in the product and technology industry including the Founders and CXOs of Paytm, CRED, Pine Labs, NoBroker, Delhivery and Sharechat. With this fundraise, the company has effectively added 21 more partners to its mission, along with the existing partners Omidyar Network India, Unitus Ventures and India Quotient. This new round of angel funding comes less than a year after Masai School raised its Series A round led by Omidyar Network India.
With this strategic round, Masai School aims to have its new partners as a strong sounding board to help build a more robust student curriculum, which aligns with the industry needs and expectations from potential workforce. In the future, the institute aims to onboard 100 such strategic partners to further strengthen the journey towards its mission.
Speaking on this new development, Prateek Shukla, Co-founder & CEO, Masai School said, “For an institute that strictly and solely focuses on outcomes, it is a great endorsement to have the right kind of industry leaders to help and support the market itself. With the advocacy and support from these stalwarts, bridging the gap between educational institutes and technology companies to meet real time industry requirements is not far away. Having 21 distinguished names joining hands with us from all across the startup and tech ecosystem is a massive validation of what we do at Masai School, our mission and our business model. We are fortunate to have partnered with these angels who will continue to act as a strong sounding board for Masai School.”
Founded with the ideology that ‘Educational Institutes should be equal stakeholders in Student Outcomes’, Masai School began operations in June 2019. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the company leverages the Income Share Agreement (ISA) model to create an outcome-oriented learning approach. Currently, the company offers programs in Full Stack Web Development (full-time and part-time programs) and a UI UX Design Program (full-time program), and are planning to launch Data Analytics, Product Management and more programs over the next few months. Over 2500+ students study at Masai School at the moment.
The list of investors include Amrish Rau of Pine Labs, Kunal Shah of CRED, Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan of Sharechat, Amit Kumar Agarwal and Akhil Gupta of NoBroker, Vipin Pathak of Care24, Ramakant Sharma of LivSpace, Mohit Tandon of Delhivery, Abhishek Goyal of Tracxn, Anurag Jain of KredX, Harsh Lunia of LendingKart, Sunil Rao of Amazon, Sharda Balaji of Novojuris and Kulin Shah of Onsurity.’
Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs said, “Coding schools such as Masai School have started to kick-start a movement altogether in the cohort-based courses market segment. We are all aware of the shortage in quality education for software and technology, and how hard it is for the technology and IT industry startups to hire the right talent even at entry-level positions. We want to enable this movement and help Masai lead this from the forefront.”
Farid Ahsan, Cofounder and COO of Sharechat said in a statement, “We are building India’s largest social media platform. Having hired developers from Masai School ourselves, we strongly believe in the mission and vision of the institute and we now want to enable and facilitate the dreams of Bharat.”
LendingKart Cofounder and CEO Harsh Lunia said, “The rising cost of education and the void in the education finance space with limited access to flexible loans at low or zero interest rates, the next wave is becoming inevitable. This breakthrough may start with “Study Now, Pay later” option – programs such as Income Share Agreement becoming the game changer in the segment”
Siddharth Nautiyal, Partner at Omidyar Network India said, “Masai is solving one of the toughest problems in the employability space today, providing rigorous training and mentorship to excluded students, mostly from the Next Half Billion segment, and making them job-ready for the most sought after technical roles. The impact the company has had in changing lives for the better is very inspiring, and that is reflected in Masai’s extremely high NPS and stellar placement record. It is great to see industry leaders appreciate Masai’s vision and back the team in its journey to help make India’s demographic dividend come true.”
Unitus Ventures Partner Surya Mantha said, “Needless to say, skills-gap is a pressing problem in the industry and is not expected to go away any time soon. Masai School is making a huge contribution to addressing this problem. And we are pleased to have some of the most prominent tech leaders partner us in this journey.”
Madhukar Sinha, Partner at India Quotient said, “Very proud to have backed Prateek for building Masai School. The impact which it is creating in the lives of so many students getting trained and placed in awesome companies is very fulfilling.”
At present, Masai School has graduated 400+ students across 14 batches, with a placement rate of over 92% and an average CTC of INR 7.5 LPA. The company has enabled Student Placements with more than 700 of its hiring partners which include the likes of top tech and product companies such as NoBroker, ShareChat, Paytm, Samsung, Airmeet, Meesho, among many others.
