Grey-collar training and recruitment platform Beyond Odds has raised $11 million (Rs 91.5 crore) in a seed funding round.
The round - a mix of equity and debt - was led by Lightspeed and Matrix Partners India. InnoVen Capital and Alteria Capital also participated in the round along with angel investors like Ritesh Agarwal (Oyo), Gaurav Munjal (Unacademy), Mayank Kumar (Upgrad), Ramakant Sharma (Livspace), Abhishek Goyal (Tracxn), Rohit MA (CloudNine Hospitals), Sumer Juneja (SoftBank), Puneet Kumar (Steadview Capital) and Abhinav Sinha (Oyo).
Beyond Odds Technologies is a platform that recruits, trains, certifies and deploys candidates for grey-collar job roles in industries like healthcare, education, construction and hospitality.
The platform also partners with universities and international accreditation and certification bodies to improve employability and global opportunities for candidates.
It runs the higher education brand ‘Emversity,’ which works with universities to offer bachelor’s degree programs in the allied health sciences stream, such as medical laboratory technology, operation theatre technology, emergency medical technology, hospital administration, medical imaging technology, and dialysis technology.
By way of the current fundraise, the company is going to launch seven physical centers of Emversity in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Nagpur, Kochi and Ranchi.
Beyond Odds was started by former Unacademy COO Vivek Sinha, an alumnus of the Indian School of Business. He stepped down from his role at Unacademy in August 2023, after a stint of nearly three years.
At Unacademy, Sinha managed several verticals including test prep (digital), offline/hybrid centres, K12, and jobs and skills.
Other than Unacademy, Sinha also had prior stints with IPO-bound hospitality company Oyo and fintech company Mobikwik, where he was the vice president and business head of the offline payments vertical.
On the other hand, Matrix Partners India, which has backed unicorns like Ola, Dailyhunt, OneCard, DealShare, Razorpay and Ofbusiness, has been investing from its fourth fund, which was launched in June 2022. The fund received commitments worth $550 million, 22% higher than its original aim of raising $450 million.
Lightspeed, which invests across stages, closed a $7.1 billion fund to invest in early- and growth-stage startups globally in 2022. It had dedicated a $500 million early-stage pool for its investments in India, while it planned to draw capital out of the $5 billion global growth capital pool for later-stage investments.
Some of its portfolio investments include Oyo, Udaan, ShareChat, Innovacer, Byju’s, and Razorpay.
