Career-focussed alternative education start-up, Masai School, has raised a pre-series A funding round of $2.5 million led by Unitus Ventures, joined by India Quotient and AngelList India.

Masai School closes its pre-series A funding at a time when the job market in the country is grappling with pandemic challenges. The company intends to use the funding to step up efforts in imparting quality education to students including school/college dropouts and make them future-ready.

Founded by Prateek Shukla, Nrupul Dev and Yogesh Bhat, Masai School began operations in June 2019. It currently trains tech aspirants in Full Stack Web and Android Development, and also helps them get placed through its partner network of 175 companies including unicorn start-ups, Series B & C start-ups, early stage start-ups and IT services firms. It also offers a part time Software Development Engineer course, for college students and working professionals who have a basic working knowledge of programming.

Following the ISA (Income Sharing Agreement) model which allows for students to 'Study now and Pay later' the course fee of ₹2.5 lakh for Full Stack Web, Android Development courses and ₹3 lakh for Software Development Engineer course is paid by the students after they get high paying, relevant jobs. Till date, Masai School has trained over 100 students across four batches, with more than 56 per cent of students from non-computer science and non-metro backgrounds. The company has campuses in Bengaluru and Patna along with online operations.

Rigorous training

Speaking on the announcement, Prateek Shukla, CEO and co-founder, Masai School, said: “We began our journey a year ago with an objective to find untapped talent in the country, train and place them for the most in-demand jobs in the country. Our initial student base, largely from non-engineering backgrounds, small towns with limited financial backgrounds take up the challenge of learning coding and finding a career path for themselves.

“We support them by providing them a rigorous training programme from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week without charging any upfront fees to help them kick start their careers through our placement programme. We are proud to have placed more than 82 per cent of our graduates at an average starting salary of ₹6.6 lakh per annum so far.”

With key focus on tech and curriculum, the funds will be used to hire industry experts to build and impart curriculum, strengthen current offerings, tap into new learner base from freshers to working professionals, computer science graduates and college students; build new disciplines like UX, Product Management, Data Science and strengthen its classroom and digital infrastructure.

“In the long run, we aim to become a higher education alternative, catering to students and working professionals alike in preparing a future-ready Indian tech workforce. We aim to enable the dreams of a 1,000 plus learners in the next 12 months” said Shukla.

Surya Mantha, Senior Partner, Unitus Ventures, said, “Unitus Ventures has been a pioneer in job-tech. Masai envisions to narrow down the extensive skill-gap and employability issues in India. We share the vision and with this partnership, we aim to drive positive economic and social impact together.”