AttainU, a Bengaluru-based educational technology startup providing high quality, live online software education courses as college alternative to individuals, has raised angel funding from various individual investors to carry out various plans, the company said in its press release.
The investors include Shailesh Rao, ex-Google India Head, Nikhil Rungta, ex-Intuit India Head, Anil Gelra, Founder SnapMint, and Manish Kumar, Founder KredX and LetsVenture.
The company said that it will use the fund to further strengthen its faculty, develop courses, counsel teams and build a semi-automated platform to cater to the huge inbound student demand that they are receiving.
Founded by Divyam Goel and Vaibhav Bajpai in 2018, AttainU focuses on high-quality, industry-aligned learning outcomes, targeted towards highly motivated individuals looking to get into high-growth careers. It currently offers full-time, online 7-month long software engineering courses for individuals looking to get into software engineering careers. AttainU aims to serve students who have a college education but don’t have a job or a satisfactory job. Individuals don’t need to have prior coding experience to enrol in its courses.
AttainU courses are focused on industry-aligned practical skills and professionally required life skills. The startup provides career counselling as part of their student assessment process and connects graduates to industry partners for placement upon completion of the course.
The company doesn’t charge any upfront course fee. It follows a deferred fee payment model conditional to employment (based on Income Share Agreement). In other words, you pay the course fee only when you get placed, in easy instalments (8000 per month) up to 36 months when your annual salary is above Rs. 5 lakhs.
Sharing about the startup and its current status, Divyam Goel, Co-Founder & CEO, AttainU, said,
“For us, the goal has always been about solving higher education in a systematic, scalable way. From the beginning, we have had a very strong focus on maintaining our high-quality learning outcomes as we scale. Over the last 10 months, we have been able to figure out many processes, complementing human psychology, to facilitate deep-rooted learning. At this point, we are receiving double-digit thousand student applications every month and are very excited about the scale of impact we will be able to deliver through our tech-first approach.”
Lauding the company and its work in addressing the unemployment issue, Nikhil Rungta, ex-Intuit India MD, said,
“Over 60% of the engineering students who pass out every year are either unemployed or are stuck in unrelated jobs. If we go beyond engineers, this problem multiplies ten times. I feel, the team at AttainU has identified this huge unsolved problem and are trying to solve it in a tech-first, structured and scalable way. Divyam and Vaibhav have been able to put together a good team which not only has domain expertise but is also passionate about solving this huge problem. A good proof of demand is that they have secured in-principle hiring commitments from some very well-known startups like Delhivery, Grofers, 1mg, Housing and MakeMyTrip. Overall, AttainU has the potential to be one of the biggest players in the area of industry-ready skill development and employment generation.”
According to the data provided by AttainU in its press release, every year approximately nine million students graduate from colleges, but about 85% don’t make it to well paying, white collar jobs. It also stated that 50% of all BE/B.Tech graduates and 60% of all MBA (including PG Diploma) graduates are still considered not employable by tech first organizations.
Needless to mention, AttainU team comes with rich experience in deep tech and education. Divyam has worked with Microsoft, Google and Uber, and Vaibhav was a founding member at GeekforGeeks, the largest computer science interview preparation platform. AttainU, meanwhile, has so far received over 6000 student applications, produced 200 graduates, and has 20+ industry partners.