Edtech startup Newton School raises $ 5 million funds

Bengaluru: Bengaluru-based ed-tech startup, Newton School, has raised USD 5M Series A round of financing, led by RTP Global. The funding round saw participation from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Prophetic Ventures and Unacademy co-founders Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh. Flipkart's CEO Kalyan Krishnamoorthy, CRED's Kunal Shah, Freshworks' Girish Mathrubootham, Udaan's Sujeet Kumar and Razorpay founders Harshil Mathur & Shashank Kumar along with a slew of angels also participated in the round.

Founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneurs and college friends Nishant Chandra and Siddharth Maheshwari, Newton School is an edtech platform that enables people to be highly skilled software developers and get into a tech career in top companies and start-ups. Newton School's 6 months long cohort-based course includes 1000 plus hours of coding, 50 plus hours of soft skills training, live projects, and mentorship oversight - designed by reverse engineering industry requirements and taught by industry professionals.

According to Nishant Chandra, Co-Founder, Newton School, "On one side you have a million plus college graduates every year with low single digit employability rate and on the other side there are thousands of companies struggling to find talent. We aim to bridge this massive gap through Newton School's personalized learning platform. We are building an online academy and solving the deep problem of employability of graduates."

The start-up is regarded as a market leader in the space with its students hired by more than 100 companies ranging from top start-ups like Zomato, Unacademy, Nykaa, Affle to large MNCs like Publicis Sapient, Thoughtworks, Motorola, Nutanix. Newton School receives tens of thousands of applications for every cohort, and has rapidly grown 10 times its students intake in a year with its latest cohort having 300 plus students. With an aim to bridge the gender gap in the workforce, it recently launched a woman-led all women tech program to help women re-enter the workforce, equipped with industry ready skills.

Newton School has a unique fee model where students are required to pay zero fees upfront and only start paying once they get into a job. "Our fee model allows people to cross financial and location barriers thus democratising access to software development learning.

We have a student whose father is an autorickshaw driver and lost all their livelihood due to Covid. He now is a software developer in one of top edtech startups and is taking care of his family now," added Siddharth Maheshwari, Co-Founder, Newton School

Kirill Kozhevnikov, partner at RTP Global, commented, "Engineering education spend in India alone is 10 billion USD but the net outcome is low employability rates. Newton School is bridging this massive gap through its product centric personalised platform.

In a world where increasing skills matter much more than degrees, Newton School is in a prime position to not just tap into this huge market but also to create a massive impact on the lives of millions of students by providing them access to high quality industry oriented education."

Already profitable, the company plans to help companies hire a qualified and job-ready workforce of 10,000+ people, which is larger than all top colleges combined, in 2021 alone. Additionally the capital will be used to expand the team and to develop products utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) to streamline and personalise the learning journey of each student.