A select group of HNIs, including senior leadership personnel from Google, Deloitte, Tata 1mg, Axis Capital, and international photographer Joseph Radhik, also participated.

 xQ will use the capital to expand its reach in schools through its flagship offering – the xQ Video Lab. It is a space within schools, like a computer lab or a physics lab, dedicated to teaching kids video creation skills.

The startup was founded by IIM alumni Simon Jacob and Kartik Talwar in 2021 in collaboration with professional filmmakers, educators and advertising professionals. 

xQ offers access to a video creation curriculum, state-of-the-art shooting gear and access to an e-learning platform. This allows students to continue learning and practising their video-making skills at home. 

“Video is the language of the future”, said CEO Simon Jacob. “It is no longer a good-to-have extracurricular activity and if we want to introduce video-creation as a core skill to children at scale, it needs to be a part of the school curriculum.”

xQ has built a strong academic team led by an ex-headmistress and award-winning filmmakers to fine-tune their video-creation curriculum. The team is building a library of over 1,000 video-based curriculum projects where children can integrate video-making techniques like transitions, green screen shooting and stop motion animation into curricular projects for subjects like maths, science, social sciences and English. 

To make learning immersive and personalised through video-creation, xQ is also building a digital learning platform designed to be a safe space for children to learn video creation techniques, showcase their videos to students across the globe and learn new skills from each other in the process. 

To date, xQ has educated over 6,000 students across eight countries in video-making, and it is now on a mission to touch at least one million lives by 2025. 

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Existing investors We Founder Circle and Ah Ventures also participated. This brings Geekster’s total funding raised to date to $1.5 million.

The fund raised will be primarily utilized for team expansion. A part of the money will be used to expand the portfolio of offerings, add new programs, and build scalable learning and hiring platforms.

Geekster is an upskilling platform focusing on developing programming skills in students and making them work-ready for aspirational tech jobs. The startup does not charge any fee from the student until they land a well-paying job.

 Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures, commented: “Gone are the days when a graduate certificate would be more than enough to secure a job in your respective field. With the growing competition, job seekers are expected to be more skilled to be a cut above the rest. Geekster has successfully designed a tech education platform with its unique skilling model, allowing tech graduates to hone their skills at zero cost until they get a paying job. And at the same time, it engages industry professionals as educators on the platform keeping the content relevant and practical.”

 Ankit Maggu, Co-Founder of Geekster, added: “We are on a mission to democratize quality education and career opportunities; aiming to make a million graduates work ready in next few years. Our offering has witnessed great response from the students and employer partners alike, and we shall be working aggressively to scale our operations in the next few months.”

With a larger emphasis on the holistic development of the students, the company also aims to focus on fundamentals, specialized and advanced curriculum, and soft skill training. Geekster is helping 300+ companies hire the right tech talent for their teams including some top product-based companies, MNCs, and well-funded startups. The platform claims to have achieved 10x growth in the last eight months.

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Exprto, India’s largest experience-sharing and mentorship network for students, has raised Rs 5 crores in a seed round led by GSF and Angel List USA; it also had Agility Ventures, Lets Venture, and Supermorpheus participating in it. Agility Ventures is a start-up investing platform that shares a passion for nurturing and investing in early-stage businesses and technology that are transforming the supply chain.   The funding-round also saw unicorn founders and angel investors participating in it, which included Rishabh Karwa (Go Mechanic), Rahul Jaimini (Swiggy), Sanka Aravind (Rapido), Rajesh Yabaji(Blackbuck), Vikas Bagaria(Pee Safe), Rahul Maroli(Zee5), Nitish MitterSain (Nazara Technologies), Dinesh Gulati (India Mart), Deep Gupta, Sahil Mahaldar and Archana Priyadarshini among others.

Varun Richharia, co-founder of Exprto, stated that the edtech start-up is going after the big whitespace opportunity which is untapped in India. He added, “The total market opportunity for ‘Mentorship as a Service’ (MAAS) in India alone is $11 billion, with $6 billion in the test prep segment only. That’s where we will create coalescence and a massive success network within the Indian student community.The evolution of Exprto continues to build on the belief that every mentor’s voice can transform and accelerate people’s career immensely, and our platform provides them with an entirely new, accessible and engaging way to do so”

The company offers mentorship services that vary in duration between 1 to 12 months range. Currently the platform offers 1-on-1 as well as cohort-based group mentorship sessions. Based on the stage of preparation that the aspirants are at, each service is personalised using their proprietary AI/ML profile-matching tech.

Rajan Chaudhary, co-founder of Exprto, feels that the company’s business model fills the gap of mentorship issues in the student community. He explained, “The Indian edtech market is primarily focused on opportunities for better teaching methodology and academic content. Despite the real advantages that such platforms have brought to students, they still struggle to achieve their exam-related objectives. These include strategies for preparation, revision, and guidance that they mostly get from senior students or from online platforms like Quora/YouTube. There is no structured approach to address the mentorship issue, but there is a clear evidence of a large market gap and the stakes are very real.”

Exprto, in the last eight months, has seen a staggering increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) of more than 23X, as well as over 18X growth in sessions of over 1 million+ minutes of mentorship. It now plans to refine the overall product and accelerate its growth by buildinga stronger team and technology with the newly-acquired funds. Product offerings will also be launched for the new market segments.

While giving reasons for funding Exprto, Rajesh Sawhney, Founder and CEO of GSF, said, “GSF is delighted to back Exprto, a fast-growing mentoring platform. Its unique business model of ‘MaaS – mentoring as a service’ is well-suited to meet the requirements of millions of aspirational students. Besides, Exprto’s founders, Varun and Rajan, are exceptional leaders and have a deep commitment committed to building a sustainable and innovative edtech platform.”

Talking about his association with edtech start-up, Dhianu Das, co-founder of Agility Ventures, said, “Exprto distinguishes itself from other edtech companies by focusing solely on an underserved market: providing high-quality mentorship to students, which is required by four out of every five students in India.”

Exprto currently has over 1,100 mentors from top Indian colleges on its platform, it plans to onboard over 10,000 new mentors in the coming months and expand into other major competitive exam segments in India.

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In a bid to strengthen its leadership sphere in the hitherto education world, Brilix, the world’s first and largest learning-focused Social Media Community Platform, has unveiled its highly-anticipated application. The application essentially bridges the gap between highly-qualified educators and promising learners to embark on the journey of accessible, affordable and enlightened learning. The content on the app is currently available in five vernacular languages: English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Gujarati. The platform is gearing up to include more languages in the coming two months.

The Brilix application is an industry-first Social Media Learning Community that is backed by blockchain technology and tokenization. It leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to ascertain learners’ fields of interest by accumulating information through a small questionnaire. This helps the platform provide better learning suggestions to learners that align with their interests and learning styles. It is a testament to the Brilix app’s effectiveness that in the Beta phase, it had registered 9000+ users. In fact, since its inception, the platform garnered more than 25000 registered users on the app. Brilix is now making provisions for launching the Brilix app on the Apple App Store.

Rohit Agrawal, Co-Founder and CEO, Brilix, said, “Being an educator, we always felt a need for a suitable social platform for educational creators and learners. This need-gap laid the foundation of Brilix, which has now connected more than 25000 users on the app. We have also joined forces with various educational content creators who have finally found the right place to monetize their comprehensive and exclusive content. Our goal is to make learners and educators self-dependent by equipping them with cutting-edge technology and advanced features so that the education-oriented community can survive and thrive together.“

Currently, even with numerous new-age edtech platforms entering the educational space, many high-potential students are unable to avail themselves of these technologies due to language barriers. On the other hand, educators are still underpaid and aren’t equipped to monetize their laborious and diligently prepared educational content. The unique application by Brilix is designed to address these issues and bridge the gap between educators and learners.

The Brilix app enables learners to collaborate, ask questions, follow leading educators, access free of cost content, participate in quizzes and polls, and support educational content creators to earn money simultaneously. It also allows users to send text, images, videos and voice notes in comments so that they can promptly receive solutions to their queries. The app also supports a delta four efficient reading system so that learners can access notes and e-books that can also be saved in the cloud.  

Apart from being incredibly learner-friendly, Brilix has also created a matchless platform for educational content creators. The application allows verified educational content creators to monetize their notes, study material and other informational content by sharing it with other learners on the platform. The platform is simply trying to create another Instagram phenomenon, but with educational content.

It is pertinent to mention that Brilix had raised pre-seed funding of INR 3.3 crore from Delhi and Mumbai-based angel investors earlier this year. The platform envisions to become the world’s first and largest learning-focused social media platform where learners can get together and reach their goals without any hesitation, awkwardness or scepticism. In the next quarter, Brilix aims to create a community of 1 million+ users and set an unparalleled benchmark. 

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They recently took over India’s largest YouTube channel ‘TS Madaan’ an edtech skilling platform which has 11 million subscribers.

This year’s goal is to acquire 100 influencers in addition to their already signed up 30 influencers who brought around 20 million subscribers for all the skilling courses.

They had a seed funding which raised $3.1 million (Rs.23 crores), and later in Series A the Edtech Company Entri raised $7 million (about Rs. 53 crores) of funding led by Omidyar Network India, with participation from Boston-based Innospark Ventures and Integrated Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity which makes a total of $10.1 million (around Rs.75 crores).

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Simplilearn, the world’s #1 Online Bootcamp and a leader in the EdTech domain, announced a Post Graduate Program in Design Thinking and Innovation in collaboration with Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst and EY Learning Solutions. The program will enable the learners to master design thinking as a strategic business transformation tool. Participants will also learn to create disruptive solutions that integrate customer desirability, business viability, and technological feasibility. The Isenberg School of Management will contribute the UMass Amherst Post Graduate Program certificate, alumni membership, monthly masterclass, and 3 credits towards the UMass Amherst Isenberg Online MBA. As the knowledge partner for the program, EY Learning Solutions will provide over 50% of the Live class delivery, including capstone and masterclasses.

The duration of the course will be four months. Key features include Live Interactive classes and the Capstone project delivered by EY Industry experts; Masterclasses by top faculty at Isenberg School of Management; 25+ practical templates of innovation to implement at work and solve business problems faster; interactive peer learning via Harvard Business Publishing case studies; LevelUp sessions from Sara Blakely and Tim Brown; and real-life projects.

Upon finishing the program, learners will receive a Joint UMass Amherst-Simplilearn Certificate of completion and alumni membership from UMass Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management. The program has been designed for an array of senior professionals, including Product/Growth/Marketing Managers, Product Heads, Consultants, and Executive Officers (CXOs) who drive strategy or lead teams in an organization.

Speaking about the program, Mr. Anand Narayanan, Chief Product Officer, Simplilearn, said, “As problem-solving and providing exceptional customer experience becomes increasingly important, Design Thinking has come to be an essential factor for organizations. Its emphasis on creative and analytical thinking allows the organization of information and ideas into the basis for making decisions. It’s a mindset focused on solutions rather than problems. The Post Graduate Program in Design Thinking and Innovation is designed to equip learners with the right set of relevant skills. Thus, we are excited to work with our renowned partners Isenberg School of Management and EY to provide the same to professionals, educators, designers who wish to excel in their respective careers.”

Anne P. Massey, PhD, Dean and Thomas O’Brien Endowed Chair, Isenberg School of Management said, “As the market increasingly demands a problem-solving approach, we are pleased to partner with Simplilearn to launch the Design Thinking and Innovation course to equip professionals with a better understanding of the subject and industry-ready skills that will help them in their future endeavors.”

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From dance and music to acting, YouForrte is enabling a channel to allow one’s creativity to become their career choice. With an endeavour to emerge as a go-to platform for securing professional opportunities based on creative abilities, the company aims to provide a medium to attract, retain, develop and deploy talent in the entertainment industry.

Addressing the prevailing challenges this tech platform will enable seamless integration of skill-sets with add-on benefits of paid assignments. Looking forward to redefining representations across a spectrum of talents, the platform aims to emerge as a haven for multiple young riders looking to advance their portfolios through contemporary channels.

According to Mohit Kaushal, Founder & CEO, YouForrte, “Over the years we have been witnessing a huge gap in the demand v/s supply across the media and entertainment industry. Also, India offers a pool of talent waiting for the right opportunity to showcase their strength and creativity in this dynamic and aggressively evolving industry. Therefore, YouForrte is trying to facilitate a medium to showcase the hidden gems and will help transform the industry through this modernized digital intervention.”

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Infinity Learn is conducting the India’s Biggest scholarship exam Infinity Learn India Talent Exam (ILITE) for Secondary &Senior Secondary Grades (Class 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13) students who are targeting to crack JEE Main, JEE Advanced, and NEET exams.

The scholarship is aimed to help students prepare with top faculty to strengthen foundation and crack the entrance exam. Infinity Learn by Sri Chaitanya offers online classes for JEE Main, JEE Advanced and NEET to prepare the students for these exams.

The exam is scheduled to be conducted online on October 10th, 2021 between 2 pm to 5 pm. The Toppers of the exam can win up to 100% scholarship for Infinity Learn courses. There are other exciting prizes for the toppers such as a chance to watch a Cricket match, International Educational Trip, Sports bikes, Laptops, Smart watches, Smart home devices and many more.   

Ujjwal Singh, CEO, Infinity Learn by Sri Chaitanya announced the scholarship opportunity for quality study courses and said, “I believe in progressive Learning through the medium of technology interfaces and hope that deserving students get the best out of this. Hence this idea of scholarship. We are working towards bringing a success formula that will reimagine online classroom teaching. We will be ‘One single place’ to foster learning through Assessing themselves scientifically, provide Live-Classes, help students with Homework/ doubts-solving and foster Self-learning at home.”

Infinity Learn expects to attract 100K students to take this scholarship test.

For more information students and parents can visit infinitylearn.com/ilite

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Elucidating their plans for this year, Sumesh Nair, Co-founder & CEO, Board Infinity, said, “Our programs have 80% success in the desired learning outcomes, this has impacted more than 20,000 careers. This year, we plan to focus on preparing job-ready candidates in fast growing cities such as Malappuram, Nashik, Rajkot, Aurangabad, Trichy, Ludhiana, Vadodara”.

He added that “the company has been able to achieve a gross annual revenue run rate of Rs 35 crore, and looks to exit this financial year with more than 70 crores run rate.”

In the last ten months, the company has shown tremendous growth of 460% due to its focus on skilling, personalized coaching, and high placement rates. The company has successfully placed students in Capgemini, Tech Mahindra, Genpact, HCL, Accenture, Ugam Solutions, Quantiphi, Math Company, Wipro, Rebel Foods, Lenskart and more. The company has also collaborated with educational institutions such as IIM Nagpur, XLRI Jamshedpur, IIM Sambalpur, Shiv Nadar University, Lovely Professional University, and 30 upcoming universities to provide career coaching and interview preparation programs.

The post Board Infinity To Hire 2000 Employees In Next Six Months appeared first on Startagist.

With the available courses like Dance, Music, Acting, Disc Jockey, Yoga, Fitness, Fashion, Food, and Comedy, etc. students who were unable to pursue their passion or hobby due to pandemic and nationwide lockdown can now go after their interest along with the academic education with Klapus. Not just students but the people of all age groups who left their passion and interest due to any reason can now avail themselves the unlimited benefits of the platform at very economical prices.

Along with the skill enhancement education, Klapus employs the instructors and professionals in the CCA category to showcase their mastery in their expertise while teaching the same to the users.

COVID-19 made CCA learning very complex and entertainment came out as one of the most hit industries in India, a lot of entertainment professionals lost their job and CCA institutes were forced to shut. To overcome this Kapos Entertainment came up with the idea of Klapus which doesn’t only give a platform to learn but allows the professionals/ instructors to start teaching online being at home and earn money. 

Through teaching Klapus allows such professionals to build their followers and get their due recognition where learners can learn from unlimited industry experts by just subscribing to it.

Commenting on the occasion, Rakesh Das, Founder, Klapus, said “India, which is still dealing with the second wave of COVID-19, cases are rising and its effects are very much visible in every corner in each aspect but COVID cannot stop students from learning anymore, CCA education is as important as academic education. With Klapus, we aspire to inspire children to get back to learning their passion and improve their CCA skills and confidence which will lead to diminishing the stress, anxiety and will lead to good mental health too. Klapus make the education more interactive, interesting, and accessible to all.”

Klapus have well-curated courses with direct interactive sessions with the instructors and user-friendly interface which people of all age group can avail the benefits under rs49 to rs299 annual subscription and is available on Android and IOS.

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