The investment round featured participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, angel investors such OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal and Unacademy cofounder Gaurav Munjal. Sinha’s new firm focuses on delivering employability-driven training, certification, and recruitment services customized for the grey-collar labor niche. The firm aims to address the shortage of skilled workers in industries such as healthcare, education, hospitality, and construction.
Vivek Sinha, Unacademy’s former chief operational officer, has launched his new firm Beyond Odds Technologies with an initial capital of $11 million (INR 91.8 crore) from Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed India.
Other investors who participated in the round included InnoVen Capital, Alteria Capital, Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal, Unacademy founder Gaurav Munjal, upGrad founder Mayank Kumar, Livspace founder Ramakant Sharma, and SoftBank partner Sumer Juneja.
The startup is also backed by Abhishek Goyal (founder of Tracxn), Rohit MA (founder of CloudNine Hospitals), Puneet Kumar (managing director of Steadview Capital), and Abhinav Sinha (COO of OYO).
Bengaluru-based Beyond Odds Technologies develops employability-focused training, certification, and recruitment services for the grey-collar sector.
The platform for recruiting and training, created to address the scarcity of skilled labor, acts as a link. It links employers looking for talent with its student database.
The platform also claims to run the higher education brand ‘Emversity’, which collaborates with prestigious universities to offer bachelor’s degree programs in the allied health sciences stream.
The startup intends to address the skilled labour shortage in industries such as healthcare, education, hospitality, and construction. It promises to train candidates while retaining high standards and scalability.
Sinha stated, “Our platform will address skilled labour shortages in both domestic and global markets by generating high-quality supply from India.” Our courses also include ‘built-in revenue’, so candidates do not have to wait till they have completed their formal higher education to earn their first paycheck.”
For the current school year, Beyond Odds will focus solely on the healthcare industry.
“With our longstanding acquaintance with Vivek, we commend his understanding of the issue and ability to establish pioneering institutions,” said Rajat Agarwal, managing director of Matrix Partners India.
According to Harsha Kumar, a partner at Lightspeed, “Beyond Odds identifies and seeks to address the constraints of the current educational system. They are addressing both the demand and supply issues in college education today by offering vocational skills-based education for students in collaboration with public and private partnerships.
Sinha resigned from his role as COO of Unacademy in August.”After three fantastic years at Unacademy, I’ve chosen to take the next step in my career. I am grateful for the opportunities, friendships, and memories I have made. “Thank you for believing in me and constantly pushing me to operate at the peak of my abilities, Gaurav Munjal,” Sinha said as he left.
The edtech unicorn reduced its consolidated net loss by nearly 40% in the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2023. The startup’s loss fell to INR 1,678.1 crore in fiscal year 2022-23 (FY23) from INR 2,847.9 crore the previous year.
In addition, the edtech company recently revealed that it is entering the language learning market with the release of the Unacademy Language Learning App.
