Masai School, a Bengaluru-based skilling platform, has recently raised INR 38.62 crore ($4.77 million) in its pre-Series B funding round led by India Quotient and On Mauritius.
According to the company’s regulatory filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), India Quotient and On Mauritius have co-led the financing round by infusing Rs 15.81 crore ($1.95 million) each. Existing investor Unitus Ventures also joined the round with Rs 7 crore.
The board at Masai School passed a special resolution to issue 2,403 pre-Series B2 compulsory convertible preference shares (CCPS) at an issue price of INR 1,60,707 per share to raise INR 38.62 Cr or $4.77 million, regulatory filing further mentioned.
Started in 2019 by Prateek Shukla, Nrupul Dev and Yogesh Bhat, Masai School is a higher education career institute which trains young talent for some of the most in-demand jobs. The platform offers full-stack web development, backend development and data analytics courses to make students job ready. The company has a ‘Study Now and Pay Later’ business model. It starts charging students for the course only after receiving the first paycheck of INR 5 Lakh per annum or above.
In addition, Masai Schools also provides seven-month courses in the said tech stream and once the aspirants clear their courses, it helps them get jobs via its placement network. It is on a mission to help young Indians find lucrative job opportunities in the IT sector by honing their tech skills and connecting them with legacy tech companies and startups.
The company operates on an Income Share Agreement (ISA) model to create an outcome-oriented learning approach. Several startups and unicorns like ShareChat, Swiggy, Ola, Meesho, CoinSwitch Kuber, Cleartrip, NoBroker, and Paytm recruit from the Masai platform. To date, it has tied up with more than 2,000 companies to help them find industry-ready tech talent.
Masai School is one of the several players in India inspired by the US-based Lambda School. Newton School and Scaler by InterviewBit also operate in the same space. In February, Tiger Global-backed Scaler scooped up $55 million in its Series B round at a valuation of $710 million. Soon after that Newton School also bagged $25 million in a Series B round.
The firm recently claimed that it witnessed a 10-fold growth in the number of B2B hiring partners in the past 12 months. As per the company, it is now targeting Rs 120 crore in revenue in FY23 from Rs 19 crore in FY22.
Last year in October, Masai School had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from 21 angel investors from the Indian startup ecosystem, including CRED Founder Kunal Shah, Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, among others. Prior to that, it had raised $2.5 million in its pre-Series A funding round in 2020. The startup’s latest investment brings its total raised to $12.5 million.
