Guvi, an ed-tech startup that works towards helping coders acquire newer skills using content in their native language, has announced raising of an ₹1 crore (~$140K) in its first institutional funding round. The round was led by impact investment firm Gray Matters Capital. The startup has been incubated by IIT Madras since inception.
Guvi is currently placed as an online technical learning platform that has been started as a YouTube Channel by Ex-Paypal employees. It is working to make engineers employable by making a difference in the way they are learning. The platform offers learning in Python, Machine Learning, Big Data, Java, C, C++, MongoDB, Android etc. in the form of videos in vernacular languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi and Bengali, among others.
The funding of ₹1 crore from Gray Matters Capital’s edLABS initiative is aimed at helping GUVI create 1 million coders in India by 2020 by expanding its video content offerings in vernacular languages to incorporate more industry relevance, thereby improving the employability of engineering graduates in the country.
Highlighting the investment rationale, Aarthi Ramasubramanian, Senior Investment Manager, Gray Matters Capital edLABS, said “Employability being the theme of edLABS this year, we homed in on GUVI for our first investment this financial year. We are bombarded by headlines stating how India’s engineering graduates are not considered to be employment worthy. We believe that start-ups like GUVI can change this paradigm given that it imparts programming skills through videos in regional languages to engineering freshers beyond metro cities. This will not just improve employment prospects, but will also potentially pave the way for more technology start-ups to emerge from Tier II and III centres as coding becomes a critical skill to possess for product efficacy.”
It provides personalized learning and Interactive experience for learning through gamification mechanics and bite-sized videos. What makes GUVI stand apart from its competitors is that in-demand technologies such as ML, AI etc. are offered in regional Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali by 150+ industry mentors.
Guvi then uses these skilled coders to earn revenue, by connecting with relevant companies and placing these resources in them. GUVI shares the profiles of those who learn on its platform with the companies and the work that those who learn on the platform is stored against their profiles. Instead of saying a person knows Java, whatever programming anyone has done using Java will be saved under their profile.
