Virohan raises $2.8M across Seed and Series A Funding

Virohan will look to scale online health education to millions in India. It will also continue to introduce and expand new virtual technologies in the vocational training segment.

Virohan Pvt. Ltd., Gurgaon based leading healthcare vocational institute announced raising $2.8 Million across seed and Series A funding.

As part of the total fundraise, the seed round was led by Keiretsu Forum and series A round was led by the Elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalization and by the Singh Family Trusts, advised by Artha Impact with participation from founders and National Skill Development Corporation.

Virohan, a training partner of NSDC and a Yunus Social business Investee company, works with GE Healthcare and the Indian Medical Association (IMA) among others across India to provide youth with a career in the healthcare sector and make available trained workforce to the industry.

The latest and the fresh investment round will enable Virohan to continue to introduce and expand new virtual technologies in the vocational training segment allowing for greater accessibility, scalability, and immersion at affordable costs.

Especially, the company will use the funding to expand its content library by introducing standardized content to students in 15 additional languages and grow its partnerships from dozens to hundreds of institutions. Virohan’s vision is to educate more than a million students by 2025 through its best-in-class blended learning platform.

Due to the ongoing crisis, there is tremendous demand for healthcare workers across the world and it will continue to grow exponentially over the next decade as well. Despite the huge demand for their services, this sector is highly fragmented in India.

There are massive predicted shortages across operating theatre technicians, radiology technicians, and medical lab technicians. To combat this crisis, Virohan uses its standardized training model to rapidly train and connect its users with these fast-growing jobs in the healthcare industry.

The startup was incorporated in 2018 by the founders, Kunaal Dudeja (Co-founder & CEO), Nalin Saluja (Co-founder & CTO), and Archit Jayaswal (Co-Founder & CFO).

“Workforce readiness is a huge problem in India. There is a huge disconnect between demand and supply of the skills in the workforce across sectors forcing youth to compromise on aspirations, income, and location. We are thrilled to have the support of our incredible investors as we build the most efficient and scalable learning platform for current and future healthcare professionals,” founders said in a joint statement.

It bridges the gap between industry demand and the skills of the workforce by using its ‘technology skill stack’ through which they predict job demand for each job role across India, build out the curriculum needed, and delivers standardized training through blended and online learning.

The courses offered to emphasize on development of core technical skills, language abilities, and life skills in the student through gamified blended learning delivered by its facilitators in classrooms or purely online on its myCareer app.

All programs include long internships at hospitals for hands-on practice of the skills acquired. Virohan is a fee-based model and in order to encourage young people to join, financial linkages are provided with easy installment-based payback options after a job is secured by the users

Lead investors at Elea Foundation and Artha Impact commented on the investment, “We are excited to add another innovative model in employable skill-building to our portfolios. Giving students access to quality education, equipping them with the professional and life skills to successfully contribute to India’s healthcare sector is creating long-term impact for youth who, through Virohan, can attain aspirational jobs with a career trajectory.”

They added, “As active investors, we are very much looking forward to working with Virohan’s founders and management team in the years to come, providing strategic support and sector-specific insights.”

As part of the previous round, the company had also raised debt funding worth $270,000 from Yunus Social Business in January 2020.

Virohan has trained over 3,000 students by providing skill enhancement training for healthcare practitioners and has a tremendous placement rate of >85%.

The Edtech startup is rapidly expanding its nation-wide presence courtesy to the lockdown. It has already started its training completely online while expanding to over 20 cities in the last 5 months.