Masai School, an online+offline skilling platform that imparts industry-relevant skills instead of traditional educational curriculum, has raised $2.5Mn in a Pre-Series A round. The round was led by Unitus Ventures, joined by India Quotient & AngelList India.
Calling itself a “21st-century career focused skill building school”, Masai offers skill development classes instead of traditional schooling. Its skilling tracks, which are primarily tech focused right now, include courses such as Full Stack Web Development, Android app development among others. Masai School calls itself an alternate education company, with an aim to make skill-focused curriculum central to India’s education system.
Apart from an online platform that is still growing, the company runs an offline model which currently includes most of its students. Masai has a campus in India’s silicon valley Bangalore and in Patna, the capital of the central-eastern state of Bihar.
The platform two different course tracks. While its “r-program” is meant for beginners with absolutely zero knowledge of coding, Masai School’s “i-program” focuses on advanced users with medium to high level of acquaintance with coding, basic algorithms, data structures etc.
Talking about the company’s future, co-founder and CEO Prateek Shukla says, “In the long run, we aim to become a higher education alternative, catering to students & working professionals alike in preparing a future-ready Indian tech workforce. We aim to enable the dreams of a 1000+ learners in the next 12 months.”
While its skilling programs already make it unique, what also sets Masai apart is the upfront placement guarantee that it provides. The school provides something called a “Minimum-CTC guaranteed”, which is around ₹5 Lacs per annum (~$6700) for the r-program and ₹8 Lacs per annum ($10680) for the i-program. Additionally, by integrating the Income Sharing Agreement (ISA), they allow students to pay the course fee after they get a high paying, relevant job.
With $2.5 million in the bank, Masai now intends to accelerate its scaling strategy. The company plans to hire a number of industry veterans to help it build and impart newer skilling programs and their curriculum. Additionally, the company will expand into newer industry verticals, such as Design and Data Science.
