MicroDegree, a Mangalore-based online education platform working towards democratizing IT and job-ready skills through vernacular courses, has raised an undisclosed amount in a recent funding round.
The round was led by Research Innovation Incubation Design Labs (RIIDL) and other marquee investors including Siddharth H Somaiya, Founder & CEO at Organic Riot.
MicroDegree was founded by Gaurav Kamath, Rakesh Kothari, and Manikanta Nair in 2019. The startup is on a mission to democratize technology by offering courses in vernacular languages with a focus on relevant technologies. It aims to make emerging tech affordable for students and freshers across regions irrespective of their educational backgrounds and language.
The startup plans to use the fresh funding to enhance its technology and expand its network.
Commenting on the development, Manikanta Nair, Co-founder of MicroDegree, said,
“It is exciting to have big industry names back our vision. It encourages us to achieve our goals in the journey to empower local engineering talent from non-metro cities with foundational clarity of tech in vernacular language. Our mission is to connect them with the right opportunities at an affordable price. We believe a language shouldn’t be a hindrance for anyone to fulfill their dreams. We will use the investment to further advance our technology to come up with more efficient solutions and expand our network.”
In India, there are students from different corners of the country pursuing engineering but their inability to be fluent in English has been a barrier stopping them from learning to program or code. MicroDegree is working to address that by teaching coding in a language and instilling job-ready skills in students and freshers with their online learning programs.
Siddharth H Somaiya, who invested in an individual capacity, said,
“What is better than learning a skill like coding in your own language? I think MicroDegree will revolutionize up-skilling and making technology accessible to people who otherwise would not get access to that pedagogy due to a language barrier. I think this is a game-changer for EdTech in India and this solves a very Indian problem of language diversity and access to IT skills.”
MicroDegree team begun its journey with teaching emerging technology through a bootcamp program and they effectively managed to scale up the idea to an online platform, increasing its reach and network. The platform claims to have managed to get more than 2100 users in the first 75 days of its launch and is planning to enter new language markets beyond Kannada. It received its first cheque earlier this year from 100X.VC as part of the fund’s Class 03 portfolio.
