Former Unacademy executive–founded Emversity secures $5 million in pre-Series A round

Beyond Odds Technologies, parent of the skill-based training and higher-education platform Emversity, has announced the successful close of a $5 million pre-Series A round. The funding round was led by Z47 and Lightspeed, with participation from Alteria Capital and Innoven Capital.

So far, the startup has raised $16 million from marquee investors, including Lightspeed and Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners).

Expansion across the country

The funding comes on the back of a breakout first year for Emversity in which it expanded its footprint to 36 campuses across 18 Indian states, establishing a strong foundation in healthcare skilling while forging deep Industry, University and Student partnerships.

The startup has also launched Travel & Hospitality with the aim of solving skill-gap across multiple critical industries. It is on track to end the current financial year with 75+ campuses, the release notes.

Under the ‘Emversity School of Allied Health Sciences’, students train for roles such as nurses, therapists, caregivers, OT technicians, lab technicians, paramedics and other allied-health professionals.

The newly launched ‘Emversity School of Hospitality’ has partnered with two of the world’s largest hotel chains to offer skill-based training in rooms, F&B service, and culinary at nine campuses starting this year.

What does Emversity do?

Founded by Vivek Sinha, former COO of Unacademy, Emversity is an employability-focused, skill-based training and recruitment platform for grey-collar roles in critical nation-building sectors like healthcare, travel & hospitality, education and construction.

The startup operates two flagship programs - “SMART”, a three-year, work-integrated vocational track with employer-sponsored stipends, delivered alongside a B.Voc. degree in partnership with a NAAC A++ university at Emversity Centres of Excellence across 22 locations – and “EDGE”, a four-year, work-abroad-ready B.Sc. (Honors) program offered at 14 leading central and state-private university campuses, designed to meet global industry standards.

It has developed a model that tackles what Sinha calls the “three-pronged problem” in the higher-education-to-workforce pipeline: capacity shortage, inaccessibility due to prohibitive fees and misaligned curriculum.

“Millions of roles in healthcare, hospitality and construction lie vacant, while one-third of graduates remain unemployed,” Sinha explains. “Our employer-sponsored stipend model solves accessibility; industry co-designed curriculum ensure relevance; and our Centres of Excellence expand capacity.”

On growth ambitions, he added, “In a sector full of broken promises, quality and outcomes are our biggest differentiators. We stay obsessed with best-in-class training and employment results; scale will follow.”

Investors comment

Commenting on the investment, Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed said “Vivek and his team are bridging a systemic gap between education and employment by aligning training infrastructure with real industry demand, creating a more job ready workforce for critical sectors. What excites me the most is the non-linear impact Emversity can unlock by connecting global demand with the talent pipeline that they are developing.”

Rajat Agarwal, Managing Director at Z47, led the investment, alongside Chandrasekhar Venugopal, Principal at Z47.

Chandrasekhar commented, “Rajat and I are privileged to partner with Vivek & the team at Emversity as they take on this hard, but critical problem facing the country. From the first meeting, Vivek’s insight on fixing the education-employment gap through a job relevant pedagogy stood out. In under a year, he’s taken Emversity from this insight to national scale, with real outcomes and smart unit economics. At Z47 we are thrilled to go deeper on this journey with Vivek as Emversity scales in size and impact.”