EDTECH STARTUP ‘SOAL’ RAISES FUNDS FROM MUNJAL AUTO PROMOTERS TO LAUNCH TECH CAREERS OF INDIAN YOUTH
With an intention to bridge the employment gap in the country, School of Accelerated Learning (SOAL), a skill-tank nurturing students into disruptive, tech-empowered creators and future leaders, has raised an undisclosed amount from the investment arm of the promoters of Munjal Auto.
Incepted in the year 2017, the edtech company has grown to prominence with an 8x rise in its students. In the last 6 months alone, they have launched a new course in Product Design and a new campus in Mumbai. Through its quick iteration to online learning, it has effectively met the need of the hour of providing undisrupted education. Nearly 400+ individuals have been nurtured by the school so far, getting placed at global product companies like Dunzo, ClearTax, ShopClues, FactSet and more.
The rapidly growing product school is fueling this 3D growth further by leveraging the freshly raised incoming funds towards augmenting its proprietary technology platform named DELTA, an AI-enabled personalized learning assistant. It is also gearing up to offer programs in Product Management, Artificial Intelligence, Android Development, Blockchain and more. With campuses emerging across the country, the company now intends to identify the potential of top product enthusiasts from India’s next half billion and accelerate their careers.
Speaking on the investment round, Anuj Munjal, SARA Investments – Investment Wing of Munjal Auto Industries), said, “India has substantial potential to capitalise owing to its massive population. Unfortunately, the discrepancies in the country’s formal education system keep it from fully tapping into this talent prospect. The country is still considerably lagging behind the global standards of contemporary education and innovation. Since digital is the only way forward, the youth needs to hone their skills in this direction. The founding team at SOAL has made a brilliant headway in transforming the country’s youth into aspiring creators of digital products, and I wholeheartedly share their splendid passion.”
The Mumbai-based trio Pratik Agarwal, Raj Desai & Varsha Bhambhani-Kanwal backed by reputed tech, business and education leaders from Zeta, T-Hub & IIIT-H, has been instrumental in solving the glaring double-pronged employment-skill gap caused by a financially exclusive, outdated education system that focuses on credentialing rather than skilling.
Raj Desai, the CEO and co-founder at SOAL said, “We at SOAL are constantly on a lookout for learners with a potential for tech disruption and launching them as India’s top product developers, designers and managers. With the freshly raised funds, we will invest in their success and provide them with equal learning opportunities to meet the demands of the industry as it gets competitive. The next frontier for us will be emerging economies. We are pleased to have Anuj and his team supporting us in our vision of making quality education accessible and adding to it with their keen business sense.”
The founders, alumni of ISB, Dev Bootcamp (USA) and IIM-B, had launched SOAL with a project-driven course in Product Engineering aiming to resolve the gap in quality education. It develops the whole gamut of on-the-job skills – relevant tech, superior logic, and soft skills in their learners. Taking it a notch higher, they’ve also recently solved for inclusion by offering income share agreements to their learners from diverse socio-economic strata.
