Masai School, the Bangalore-based education start-up and the India’s first career-focused alternative education school, has raised a Pre-series A funding round of USD 2.5 million led by Unitus Ventures, joined by India Quotient & AngelList India. The school intends to use the funding to step up efforts in imparting quality education to students and make them future-ready. Masai School began its operations in June 2019. It was founded by Prateek Shukla, Nrupul Dev and Yogesh Bhat.

Masai School currently trains tech aspirants in Full Stack Web and Android Development, and also helps them get placed through its partner network. By integrating the Income Sharing Agreement (ISA), they allow students to pay the course fee after they get a high paying, relevant job.

“We began our journey a year ago with an objective to find untapped talent in the country, train and place them for the most in-demand jobs in the country. Our initial student base, largely from non-engineering backgrounds, small towns with limited financial backgrounds take up the challenge of learning coding and finding a career path for themselves. We support them by providing them a rigorous training program without charging any upfront fees and help them kick start their careers through our placement program. We are proud to have placed more than 82 percent of our graduates at an average starting

This round of funding will help us to go deeper with our original mission; while also expanding our offerings to meet the demand of companies hiring CS graduates equipped with industry relevant skills & attitude required for rapid growth

salary of Rs. 6.6 LPA so far,” states Prateek Shukla, CEO & Co-Founder, Masai School. He further adds “This round of funding will help us to go deeper with our original mission; while also expanding our offerings to meet the demand of companies hiring CS graduates equipped with industry relevant skills & attitude required for rapid growth. In the long run, we aim to become a higher education alternative, catering to students & working professionals alike in preparing a future-ready Indian tech workforce. We aim to enable the dreams of a 1000+ learners in the next 12 months”.

“Unitus Ventures has been a pioneer in job-tech. Masai envisions to narrow down the extensive skill-gap and employability issues in India. We share the vision and with this partnership, we aim to drive positive economic and social impact together,” says Surya Mantha, Senior Partner, Unitus Ventures.

“We are glad to support Masai School with its vision and purpose, since inception. India has vast talent pool who are looking for better career opportunities and Masai School is playing a key role in identifying and training the workforce. They are also helping employers access the right and ready workforce without having to train them,” says Madhukar Sinha, Co-Founder & General Partner at Early-stage venture capital investor India Quotient.