The Chennai Angels along with investment bank Spark Capital have invested in Skyfi Labs, a Bangalore-based education products and services start-up.

While the quantum of fund invested was not disclosed, the funds will be used to expand its reach to cover 1,000 new colleges, increase and refine the course offerings and enhance backend technology, company officials said.

Skyfi Labs, started in 2010, have trained around 25,000 students from 150 colleges, which includes institutions such as IITs and BITS Pilani.

Around one million engineering students graduate every year from approximately 3,500 colleges in India, according to research data. While the number is impressive, according to a recent Mckinsey finding, 75 per cent of the engineering graduates are not employable.

These courses in areas such as aero-modelling, robotics, web and mobile app development, civil engineering as well as SLATE, which is offered in partnership with engineering colleges across eight semesters of an undergraduate programme. Skyfi uses its brand courses AerotriX, Civil Simplified, Roboversity and Code Instruct to deliver these programmes.

Spark Capital, one of the co-investors in Skyfi Labs, counts companies like Twitter and Tumblr as some of the companies where it made early stage investments. This round of investment was led by Padma Chandrasekaran, a The Chennai Angels investor member and Vijay Radhakrishnan, Chief Financial Officer of Spark Capital.

Radhakrishnan, said the company was impressed with the young and dynamic founding team at Skyfi possesses and the relevance of its offerings.

Chandrasekaran said that India’s future lies in quality education with a practical as well as theoretical focus and companies like Skyfi Labs are trying to address this issue.

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