Airtel Acquires Stake in Vahan; Launches Startup Accelerator Program

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s largest integrated telecommunications company, today announced the launch of its Startup Accelerator Program to support growth of early stage Indian tech startups. With the advent of its Start-up Accelerator Program, Airtel aims to support the creation of a vibrant start-up ecosystem that contributes to “Digital India”.

Through Airtel’s Startup Accelerator, early startups get access to Airtel’s online and offline distribution network, deep market understanding and ecosystem of global strategic partners. In addition, Airtel has also developed strong in-house capabilities around machine learning and artificial intelligence which could be leveraged to aid the growth of startups. Furthermore, startups also get access to advisory services from Airtel’s executive team.

Vahan is the first to join Airtel Startup Accelerator

Airtel announced the induction of Bengaluru based tech startup Vahan into its Startup Accelerator Program. Airtel will acquire a stake in Vahan and partner with them in building significant scale to achieve their vision of enabling jobs for the next billion internet users.

Founded in 2016 and backed by YCombinator and Khosla Ventures, Vahan leverages advanced Artificial Intelligence to match job seekers with employers inside messaging apps such as Whatsapp. It is focused on finding blue collar jobs for millions of young Indians in Delivery, Driving, Retail, BFSI, BPO and Hospitality sectors with companies such as Zomato, Swiggy and Dunzo as clients.

Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer, Bharti Airtel said: “Today, early stage startups in India have some very exciting ideas but face multiple challenges in scaling up. With Airtel’s scale and digital capabilities around distribution and payments, we have the potential to drive accelerated growth of emerging startups that are solving hard problems. The team at Vahan is doing some incredible work to bring jobs to millions of people through AI based technology. We are excited to partner with them on this vision.”

Madhav Krishna, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Vahan, said: “Airtel will be a key partner for us as we look to solve a hard problem for Bharat. Most blue-collar job seekers are unaware of the opportunities that exist in the market, especially new-age on-demand jobs. Airtel’s distribution channels will help us reach the very depths of the country and in turn, help millions of Indians take control of their economic destiny. We are incredibly excited about this partnership.”

Villgro Invests Seed Funding in Ed Tech Startup Vahan

Villgro has announced a new addition to its investment and incubation portfolio – Vahan, a mobile education platform for low- income adults. Villgro has provided the company seed funding; the enterprise will also receive support through senior advisors who will provide strategic guidance to the business.

India adds 12 million people to the workforce every year. However, according to an Aspiring Minds report, it is estimated that around 50% of those people are unemployable due to a lack of English language and cognitive skills. Vahan is building a mobile application for making learning English affordable and accessible to India's massive low-income adult population. By helping people in the workforce learn better English more effectively, the startup will help them find employment in high growth sectors such as retail, hospitality, beauty and wellness, where English proficiency is important.

“After conducting research with people from low-income communities looking to learn English, we found that the lack of resources for practising was one of the biggest reasons why they weren’t able to learn the language effectively. That’s when the idea for Vahan was born – our goal is to mimic language immersion for low-income English language learners through our app,” says Madhav Krishna, founder of Vahan.

Vahan’s application is designed to work on basic, feature phones (75% of all cellphones in India) as well as smartphones, and supports full content customization/contextualization. Its goal is to help solve the skills gap problem in India and reach 15 million learners by 2020. The company is currently running pilots with two organisations in the development space – Magic Bus and LabourNet.

“This company represents the kind of enterprises that Villgro is excited about – a strong entrepreneur who has demonstrated a keen understanding of the sector; a deep commitment to creating impact; and a resolute desire to build a sustainable and scalable social business. We are optimistic about the way Vahan is using technology to reach students from low-income communities and believe this can have scaleable impact over the next few years,” says Kavita Rajagopalan, Investment Manager – Education, Villgro.

“We’re primarily looking for access to Villgro’s network of mentors and advisors which will be invaluable given that we’re a young organization with a focus on creating social impact at scale. They will also be able to help us form partnerships with relevant organizations in the education space,” added Madhav.

The education startup space is fast growing with more companies focussed on tech-enabled learning solutions for the poor, with an eye on scaling impact. Interest in education startups has also grown exponentially. In 2015, there were 18 impact investments in education, eight of them between $100,000 - $500,000 (Rs 65 lakh to Rs 3.25 crore); two-thirds of them in the K-12 segment.

Recognizing the need for investing in education startups, Villgro has been deepening its work in this space by incubating more education enterprises as well as working with partners like the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, which is the anchor funder for Villgro’s projects in the education sector. Villgro was selected by the Dell Family Foundation as part of their strategy to catalyse market based innovations in the education sector to impact learning outcomes for children living in urban poverty.

Villgro Invests Seed Funding in Ed Tech Startup Vahan

Villgro has announced a new addition to its investment and incubation portfolio – Vahan, a mobile education platform for low- income adults. Villgro has provided the company seed funding; the enterprise will also receive support through senior advisors who will provide strategic guidance to the business.

India adds 12 million people to the workforce every year. However, according to an Aspiring Minds report, it is estimated that around 50% of those people are unemployable due to a lack of English language and cognitive skills. Vahan is building a mobile application for making learning English affordable and accessible to India's massive low-income adult population. By helping people in the workforce learn better English more effectively, the startup will help them find employment in high growth sectors such as retail, hospitality, beauty and wellness, where English proficiency is important.

“After conducting research with people from low-income communities looking to learn English, we found that the lack of resources for practising was one of the biggest reasons why they weren’t able to learn the language effectively. That’s when the idea for Vahan was born – our goal is to mimic language immersion for low-income English language learners through our app,” says Madhav Krishna, founder of Vahan.

Vahan’s application is designed to work on basic, feature phones (75% of all cellphones in India) as well as smartphones, and supports full content customization/contextualization. Its goal is to help solve the skills gap problem in India and reach 15 million learners by 2020. The company is currently running pilots with two organisations in the development space – Magic Bus and LabourNet.

“This company represents the kind of enterprises that Villgro is excited about – a strong entrepreneur who has demonstrated a keen understanding of the sector; a deep commitment to creating impact; and a resolute desire to build a sustainable and scalable social business. We are optimistic about the way Vahan is using technology to reach students from low-income communities and believe this can have scaleable impact over the next few years,” says Kavita Rajagopalan, Investment Manager – Education, Villgro.

“We’re primarily looking for access to Villgro’s network of mentors and advisors which will be invaluable given that we’re a young organization with a focus on creating social impact at scale. They will also be able to help us form partnerships with relevant organizations in the education space,” added Madhav.

The education startup space is fast growing with more companies focussed on tech-enabled learning solutions for the poor, with an eye on scaling impact. Interest in education startups has also grown exponentially. In 2015, there were 18 impact investments in education, eight of them between $100,000 - $500,000 (Rs 65 lakh to Rs 3.25 crore); two-thirds of them in the K-12 segment.

Recognizing the need for investing in education startups, Villgro has been deepening its work in this space by incubating more education enterprises as well as working with partners like the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, which is the anchor funder for Villgro’s projects in the education sector. Villgro was selected by the Dell Family Foundation as part of their strategy to catalyse market based innovations in the education sector to impact learning outcomes for children living in urban poverty.