Skill-Lync, an engineering-focused edtech startup, has raised $17.5 million (Rs 130 crore) in its Series A funding round led by Iron Pillar.
Existing investors including Y Combinator, Better Capital, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, Sai Krishnamurthy (Xto10X), and Rashmi Kwatra (Sixteenth Street Capital) participated in this round.
The fresh funds raised will be used to increase the number of courses the company offers. It will also build a “strong” management team and expand operations in international markets.
The firm provides courses on mechanical, electrical, civil, and computer science engineering. It focuses on electric vehicle design, embedded systems design, autonomous vehicles, renewable energy, full-stack development, and data analytics.
Skill-Lync also offers construction management services for students in India and other parts of the world.
“The ever-increasing gap between what industries expect and what students learn during their engineering education has caused a global shortage of high quality engineering talent,” said Suryanarayanan P, co-founder of Skill-Lync.
“Engineering education and upskilling outside of computer science have seen very little digital disruption over the last two decades. This, combined with the ever-expanding need for real world interdisciplinary applications of engineering creates a unique opportunity to establish a multi billion dollar global company with deep moats in this space," said Anand Prasanna, managing partner at Iron Pillar.
To date, Skill-Lync has raised a total of $20 million across seed and Series A funding stages.
Founded in 2018 by Sarangarajan V Iyengar and Sarangarajan V, the company aims to provide 8 to 12 month master courses and 6 month programmes for the Indian engineering education system.
The latest investment comes amid a boom in demand for online education as the pandemic has forced students indoors.
Yesterday, SoftBank-backed Unacademy said it had closed a $440 million (Rs 3,263 crore) round led by Temasek.