Emversity secures $5 Million in Pre-series A led by Lightspeed and Z47

• Since its seed round last year, the company has scaled to 36 campuses across  18 states, creating a highly skilled grey-collar workforce in critical sectors. 

 Beyond Odds Technologies, parent of the skill-based training and  higher-education platform Emversity, today announced the successful close of a $5 million Pre-Series A round.  The round was led by Z47 and Lightspeed, with participation from Alteria Capital and Innoven Capital. 

The funding comes on the back of a breakout first year for Emversity in which it expanded its footprint to 36  campuses across 18 Indian states establishing a strong foundation in healthcare skilling while forging deep  Industry, University and Student partnerships. The company has also launched Travel & Hospitality keeping in  line with its mission of solving skill-gap across multiple critical industries. The company is on track to end the  current financial year with 75+ campuses. 

Under the ‘Emversity School of Allied Health Sciences’, students train for roles such as nurses, therapists,  caregivers, OT technicians, lab technicians, paramedics and other allied-health professionals. The newly  launched ‘Emversity School of Hospitality’ has partnered with two of the world’s largest hotel chains to offer  skill-based training in rooms, F&B service, and culinary at nine campuses starting this year. 

Founded by seasoned operator Vivek Sinha, former COO of Unacademy, Emversity bridges the  skilled-workforce gap in nation-building industries by embedding work-integrated, technology-driven training into  degree programs at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Its unique model tackles what Sinha calls the  “three-pronged problem” in the higher-education-to-workforce pipeline: capacity shortage, , inaccessibility due  to prohibitive fees and misaligned curriculum. “Millions of roles in healthcare, hospitality and construction lie  vacant, while one-third of graduates remain unemployed,” Sinha explains. “Our employer-sponsored stipend  model solves accessibility; industry co-designed curriculum ensure relevance; and our Centres of Excellence  expand capacity.” 

On growth ambitions, he added, “In a sector full of broken promises, quality and outcomes are our biggest  differentiators. We stay obsessed with best-in-class training and employment results; scale will follow.” 

Commenting on the investment, Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed said “Vivek and his team are bridging a  systemic gap between education and employment by aligning training infrastructure with real industry demand,  creating a more job ready workforce for critical sectors. What excites me the most is the non-linear impact  Emversity can unlock by connecting global demand with the talent pipeline that they are developing.” 

Rajat Agarwal, Managing Director at Z47, led the investment, alongside Chandrasekhar Venugopal, Principal at  Z47. Chandrasekhar commented, “Rajat and I are privileged to partner with Vivek & the team at Emversity as  they take on this hard, but critical problem facing the country. From the first meeting, Vivek’s insight on fixing the  education-employment gap through a job relevant pedagogy stood out. In under a year, he’s taken Emversity  from this insight to national scale, with real outcomes and smart unit economics. At Z47 we are thrilled to go  deeper on this journey with Vivek as Emversity scales in size and impact.”