Kalvi, a disruptive EdTech platform with a mission to transform the future of higher education in technology, is raising $1.7 million in seed funding from more than 30 founders of unicorns and global corporate leaders.
Investors participating in the round include Nithin Kamath (Zerodha), Sujeet Kumar (Udaan), Kunal Shah (Cred), Rahul Chari (PhonePe), Ankit Bhati (Ola/Amnic), Dr. Kumar Muthuraman (University of Texas, Austin), and Anupam Mittal (People Group). Founders and CXOs from startups like Haptik, Byju’s, Unacademy, 1Mg, Rapido, Zolve, Rupeek, INCREFF, Bright Champs, Yellow.ai, iZooto, Onsurity, OYO, and global leaders from Microsoft, Google, and Flipkart have also participated in the funding round, according to the co-founders of the company.
Kalvi supercharges the traditional computer engineering degree construct using their proprietary and cutting-edge instructional design called 'Quadrangle'. This learning management ecosystem integrates work as a part of the program along with liberal courses to offer the World's First Liberal Engineering program, in partnership with universities and institutions of eminence.
Kalvi's learning model is a convergence of the latest technology curriculum, a liberal outlook on engineering, and a real-world work experience. The instructional design (Quadrangle) is built to map the end-to-end learning footprint of the students by teaching them the how, focusing on the why, and constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing based on the whole game teaching methodology. The quadrangle is built on four main pillars namely the academic core, skilling core, work integration, and analytics.
Speaking about the platform, Rajesh Kumar, Co-founder & CEO, Kalvi said:
"Acceleration in technology development has made the Computer Science degree program one of the most sought-after streams today; however, students who are graduating are not industry-ready. Meanwhile, the talent recruiters are spending an inordinate amount of time and resources to equip them with job skills. Offering a solution here, the Liberal Engineering program introduces students to big picture thinking and helps them naturally build the empathy to think about the ‘why’ instead of blindly executing theory-based learning. In a way, work-integrated liberal engineering will build their technical knowledge and make them great at executing. This will also build empathetic leaders of the future who will work as a team to get to the root of a problem and then solve it."
Kalvi’s first-of-its-kind ‘work-integrated liberal engineering program’ in partnership with universities, focuses on nurturing big-picture thinking in students. This will not only make students strong technology professionals but will also give them the required grounding to evolve into future CTOs, CEOs, and tech entrepreneurs. The courses are selected carefully and approved by an academic council comprising of leading professors from various global institutions and whetted by an industry advisory board consisting of experts from the technology industry.
With a vision of creating the technology leaders of tomorrow, Kalvi believes this 4-year on-campus fully residential liberal engineering program will help students to build their technical knowledge and make them great at executing. This will also support the learners in keeping pace with the constantly evolving business environment by shifting the focus from short-term outcomes to long-term goals for holistic development.
With a market-fit learning pedagogy, Kalvi instead of typical chalk and talk class lectures provides students on-site learning. Through this, students can learn on the job, come back, have robust dialogue and discussions with peers and professors, which gives them the ability to challenge preconceived hypotheses and theories, and think creatively, a statement said. Offering solutions for the acute talent needs of the technology industry, the 4 year on-campus fully residential liberal engineering program, apart from keeping the curriculum in line with the ever-changing needs of the industry, is also interspersing liberal education aspects in engineering thereby making this the world’s first liberal engineering program, added the statement.
