Edtech Startup GreyAtom Raises $1M Funding From Pravega Ventures

Ed-tech start up GreyAtom, has raised a $1M funding round led by early-stage fund Pravega Ventures.

GreyAtom is a bootcamp style immersive learning program for Data Science, Machine Learning and AI. Aspirants learn technologies for future by working on REAL problem statements and datasets from GreyAtom’s industry partners. Learn = Do Real work is their mantra. At the heart of student learning is Commit.Live, a homegrown cloud based learning platform that ensures that learning stays practice centered, personally meaningful and social at the same time.

Commit.Live empowers the student with deep insight into the qualitative aspects of project work done with metrics like competency maps, code efficiency and adherence to industry standards. In little under an year, GreyAtom has onboarded 35 companies to be Industry Partners, empanelled 41 Certified Instructors and processed over 450 students under various programmes.

GreyAtom is founded by Shweta Doshi, Mitul Thakkar and Mayuresh Shilotri in February 2017.

Previously, Mitul and Mayuresh co-founded Customer360 a company in Customer Engagement Management space, which was acquired by NASDAQ listed Indianapolis, U.S. based-Interactive Intelligence in Nov ‘15, while Shweta worked as Associate Director at Nielsen.

Shweta is an engineering graduate from V.J.T.I., Mumbai. Mayuresh is an alumnus of IIT Madras and Mitul has graduated with a Master’s degree in Computer Science from State University of New York (SUNY),
Binghamton.

“Modern employers are interested whether a prospective hire will be able to solve it’s real world problem and less concerned with pedigree. As a result, learning outcomes become more critical when teaching engineering disciplines. A mix of
online-offline blended approach is the way forward. We have built a product
Commit.Live where the students login to solve real-world problems based on real data provided by industry partners. Not just a single faculty but the whole ecosystem is harvested for the benefit of aspirants” said Mitul Thakkar, Co-Founder of GreyAtom.

“Commit.Live brings a fresh perspective to education by enabling a compelling learning experience. Commit.Live balances the adherence of traditional training and mixing
best of modern academia. Team at GreyAtom is experienced and fanatic about driving learning outcomes for Students and Organizations looking to upskill workforce.”said Rohit Jain, Partner at Pravega Ventures.

Pravega Ventures was founded in 2016 by Mukul Singhal and Rohit Jain. The fund provides seed and pre-series A stage capital to startups. The VC fund has previously invested in companies like Silicon Valley-based big data startup Innovaccer Inc, AI driven expense management company Fyle among other companies.

EdTech Startup Space in India -

The Ed-Tech sector in India is seeing lot of traction off late, as in recent months number of funding and M&A took place. Just last week, Bengaluru-based enterprise platform for educational institutions CollPoll has raised its pre-series A funding round led by Manipal Global Education Services [MaGE].

In November 2017, AEON Learning Private Limited, which is backed by Kris Gopalkrishnan, acquired Acadgild, an online edtech startup, for $10 million in an all stock deal.

In the same month, an another edtech startup Perspectico raised seed funding from Delhi University and Government of Delhi Incubator.

Additionally, AICTE tied-up with Fourth Ambit, a Kerala-based edtech startup, to connect over 10,000 tech insitutes across India through online portals.

Edtech Startup GreyAtom Raises $1M Funding From Pravega Ventures

Ed-tech start up GreyAtom, has raised a $1M funding round led by early-stage fund Pravega Ventures.

GreyAtom is a bootcamp style immersive learning program for Data Science, Machine Learning and AI. Aspirants learn technologies for future by working on REAL problem statements and datasets from GreyAtom’s industry partners. Learn = Do Real work is their mantra. At the heart of student learning is Commit.Live, a homegrown cloud based learning platform that ensures that learning stays practice centered, personally meaningful and social at the same time.

Commit.Live empowers the student with deep insight into the qualitative aspects of project work done with metrics like competency maps, code efficiency and adherence to industry standards. In little under an year, GreyAtom has onboarded 35 companies to be Industry Partners, empanelled 41 Certified Instructors and processed over 450 students under various programmes.

GreyAtom is founded by Shweta Doshi, Mitul Thakkar and Mayuresh Shilotri in February 2017.

Previously, Mitul and Mayuresh co-founded Customer360 a company in Customer Engagement Management space, which was acquired by NASDAQ listed Indianapolis, U.S. based-Interactive Intelligence in Nov ‘15, while Shweta worked as Associate Director at Nielsen.

Shweta is an engineering graduate from V.J.T.I., Mumbai. Mayuresh is an alumnus of IIT Madras and Mitul has graduated with a Master’s degree in Computer Science from State University of New York (SUNY),
Binghamton.

“Modern employers are interested whether a prospective hire will be able to solve it’s real world problem and less concerned with pedigree. As a result, learning outcomes become more critical when teaching engineering disciplines. A mix of
online-offline blended approach is the way forward. We have built a product
Commit.Live where the students login to solve real-world problems based on real data provided by industry partners. Not just a single faculty but the whole ecosystem is harvested for the benefit of aspirants” said Mitul Thakkar, Co-Founder of GreyAtom.

“Commit.Live brings a fresh perspective to education by enabling a compelling learning experience. Commit.Live balances the adherence of traditional training and mixing
best of modern academia. Team at GreyAtom is experienced and fanatic about driving learning outcomes for Students and Organizations looking to upskill workforce.”said Rohit Jain, Partner at Pravega Ventures.

Pravega Ventures was founded in 2016 by Mukul Singhal and Rohit Jain. The fund provides seed and pre-series A stage capital to startups. The VC fund has previously invested in companies like Silicon Valley-based big data startup Innovaccer Inc, AI driven expense management company Fyle among other companies.

EdTech Startup Space in India -

The Ed-Tech sector in India is seeing lot of traction off late, as in recent months number of funding and M&A took place. Just last week, Bengaluru-based enterprise platform for educational institutions CollPoll has raised its pre-series A funding round led by Manipal Global Education Services [MaGE].

In November 2017, AEON Learning Private Limited, which is backed by Kris Gopalkrishnan, acquired Acadgild, an online edtech startup, for $10 million in an all stock deal.

In the same month, an another edtech startup Perspectico raised seed funding from Delhi University and Government of Delhi Incubator.

Additionally, AICTE tied-up with Fourth Ambit, a Kerala-based edtech startup, to connect over 10,000 tech insitutes across India through online portals.

Datasigns Technologies Secures $1.5 Mn From SRI Capital, BeeNext, Others

Datasigns Technologies, a mobile first financial technology startup that operator of lending platform Shubh Loans has raised $1.5 million in pre-series-A funding from SRI Capital, BeeNext and Pravega Ventures. The firm plans to utilize freshly infused fund to grow its technology team and expand to 25 markets from seven.

Prior to this round, the company has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Sanjai Vohra, former MD of JP Morgan, V Bunty Bohra, India CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Peeyush Misra, a former partner at Goldman Sachs.

Commenting on the development, Sashi Reddi, Founder, SRI Capital said, “Many massive companies are going to be built in this space, finally being able to lend to the next 200 million consumers ­ Shubh Loans will be one of them.” Reddi has earlier invested in enterprise SaaS companies including Identropy and Yellow Dig.

At $1.2 trillion, India is estimated to be one of the largest markets for consumer finance in the world, behind the US and China. It is also one of the least evolved markets for lending, with close to 70% of the market being underserved by institutional lenders. According to a report by international philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network, over 400 million people borrowed money in India in 2014, but fewer than one in seven were approved for a formal loan. The ratio of consumer loans to GDP for India is at a low 11%, compared to countries like China which is close to 40%.

This show that the current credit system is not working for a large part of our population. Almost 400 million people are being excluded because of traditional and archaic ways of credit scoring.

According to the company website, Datasigns aims to democratize credit and make it available to all. Their technology platform, Shubh Loans is transforming consumer lending. It is doing so by busting the myths that it is hard to get data, difficult to store it and even tougher to use it. The platform help loan companies to make smarter credit decisions and to expand the availability of fair and transparent credit.

Founded in 2016 by Monish Anand, Rahul Sekar, Anand Barua and Tushar Patel, Shubh Loans is a vernacular language app that builds a proprietary credit score and report for loan applicants, who can then borrow from any of the nine banks and NBFCs on the platform.

“We are targeting people who do not have access to bank loans and bring them into the formal banking economy. Using the Shubh Loans app, users can apply for a loan of up to Rs 2 lakh for a maximum time of two years,” said Monish Anand, CEO of Shubh Loans.

The company claims that since its launch, over 60,000 customers have built their credit score using Shubh Loans. The platform further boasts to have a monthly growth rate of 50% and aims to bring over 10 lakh people into the formal banking system through its lending and credit-building product.