06-05-2025
Emversity secures ₹50 lakh in Pre-series A led by Lightspeed and Z47
Beyond Odds Technologies, parent of the skill-based training and higher-education platform Emversity, announced the close of a ₹50 lakh Pre-Series A round. The round was led by Z47 and Lightspeed, with participation from Alteria Capital and Innoven Capital.
The funding comes on the back of a breakout first year for Emversity in which it expanded its footprint to 36 campuses across 18 Indian states. The company has also launched Travel & Hospitality and is aiming to end the current financial year with more than 75 campuses.
Under the 'Emversity School of Allied Health Sciences', students train for roles such as nurses, therapists, caregivers, OT technicians, lab technicians, paramedics and other allied-health professionals. The newly launched 'Emversity School of Hospitality' has partnered with two large hotel chains to offer skill-based training in rooms, F&B service, and culinary at nine campuses starting this year.
Founded by Vivek Sinha, former COO of Unacademy, Emversity attempts to bridge the skilled-workforce gap in industries by embedding work-integrated, technology-driven training into degree programs at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Its model tackles what Sinha calls the 'three-pronged problem' in the higher-education-to-workforce pipeline: capacity shortage, inaccessibility due to prohibitive fees and misaligned curriculum.
'Millions of roles in healthcare, hospitality and construction lie vacant, while one-third of graduates remain unemployed,' Sinha explains. 'Our employer-sponsored stipend model solves accessibility, industry co-designed curriculum ensures relevance, and our Centres of Excellence expand capacity.'
'In a sector full of broken promises, quality and outcomes are our biggest differentiators. We stay obsessed with best-in-class training and employment results; scale will follow,' he adds.
Commenting on the investment, Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed said, 'Vivek and his team are bridging a systemic gap between education and employment by aligning training infrastructure with real industry demand, creating a more job ready workforce for critical sectors. What excites me the most is the non-linear impact Emversity can unlock by connecting global demand with the talent pipeline that they are developing.'
Rajat Agarwal, Managing Director at Z47, led the investment, alongside Chandrasekhar Venugopal, Principal at Z47. Venugopal commented, 'Rajat and I are privileged to partner with Vivek and the team at Emversity as they take on this hard, but critical problem facing the country. From the first meeting, Vivek's insight on fixing the education-employment gap through a job relevant pedagogy stood out. In under a year, he's taken Emversity from this insight to national scale, with real outcomes and smart unit economics. At Z47 we are thrilled to go deeper on this journey with Vivek as Emversity scales in size and impact.'
