Online coding bootcamp Masai School has raised funds from 21 angel investors, including CRED’s Kunal Shah, IPO-bound Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Pine Labs' Amrish Rau, as it looks to increase student intake to 7000 by March 2022 and expand to Tier-2 and 3 cities.
The company did not disclose the amount but CEO and co-founder Prateek Shukla told Moneycontrol the value was less than the number of rounds the company has raised.
Valued at $30 million, the company has raised close to $8 million in two rounds—$5 million in 2021 and $2.5 million in its first round.
The latest round comes at a time when the ed-tech ecosystem is seeing significant traction, with the coronavirus outbreak forcing people to shift to online learning.
Online learning platforms have seen their demand more than double over the last year.
Masai School
Masai School was founded in June 2019 and has 2,500 students at any point in time.
Following the Lamda School model in the US, students go through a 30-week intense training programme, followed by placements.
The course costs Rs 3 lakh, which students can pay after they are placed and get an annual minimum salary of Rs 5 lakh.
The company has seen the demand for its course increase following the virus outbreak.
It has partnered with startups, large information technology services firms and multinationals for placements. So far, it has placed around 400 students, and the number is expected to go to 1,500 in the next two quarters.
The company has a monthly revenue run rate of $500,000 and expects it go up to $1 million in January 2022.
As the demand grows, the company plans to expand and partnerships with the industry big names such as Shah, and Sharma does add to the trust factor.
The other investors include Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan of Sharechat, Amit Kumar Agarwal and Akhil Gupta of NoBroker, Vipin Pathak of Care24, Ramakant Sharma of LivSpace, Mohit Tandon of Delhivery, Abhishek Goyal of Tracxn, Anurag Jain of KredX, Harsh Lunia of LendingKart, Sunil Rao of Amazon, Sharda Balaji of Novojuris and Kulin Shah of Onsurity.
Funding, expansion
Unlike the previous rounds of funding that were growth-focused, bringing 21 angel investors onboard had a different objective –long-term partnership, said Shukla.
“So we never wanted to be serious capital for the sake of raising the capital. We wanted to bring the element of industry into Masai School,” he said.
“We approached each of them and told them that, ‘either you have already hired and you must be happy with it, or you might not have it and you are going to (in the future)’. Either way, we want you to have a long-term partnership with us.”
Bringing in best-known Indian entrepreneurs on board also ties up with the company’s expansion plans.
“When we go to the tier-2 and tier-3 towns, people will think that it (our model of learning first and pay after getting placed) is too good to be true. But these people associated with you bring in a different level of trust,” Shukla explained.
The company is eyeing 20 cities and plans to have 7,000 students on board over the next two quarters.
“By March, the goal is to become equivalent to all the IITs final year students combined. That should be the scale of Masai School and that is where we are,” Shukla said.
