Sunstone, a higher education startup that works with academic institutions to help their students improve their skills for employability, has raised $35 million in a new funding round as it seeks to spread to other Indian cities.
Sunstone’s founders said Friday that WestBridge Capital led the startup’s Series C funding round. Alteria Capital also participated in the funding, which brings its round to date to approximately $68 million.
There are thousands of colleges and management institutions in India, but apart from those that top the rankings, most are unable to attract enough students. Their programs are also generally outdated and they struggle to get their students to get jobs.
Founded in 2019, Sunstone addresses these challenges by offering students a wide range of additional courses and helping them find jobs, co-founder Piyush Nangru told TechCrunch in an interview.
“Colleges operate at 40% occupancy. This amounts to a perishable inventory for them, due to which they are unable to amass resources and hence the quality of education suffers,” he said. “We partner with these institutions to provide soft skills and development courses as well as campus life programs for students to improve the quality of their education.”
Through these partnerships, the institutes continue to offer hundreds of hours of “core” courses to students. “Take the MBA, for example. It is a 900 hour program, which covers key topics like accounting, marketing and finance. The curriculum is outdated, so we are integrating our own 600-hour modules – half of which are soft skills focussed and the rest industry ready skills – on top of that,” he explained.
Piyush Nangru (left) and Ashish Munjal co-founded Sunstone in 2019.
The New Delhi-based startup currently offers its services to undergraduate and postgraduate students at more than 40 institutions spread across nearly three dozen Indian cities.
“India’s higher education system is on the brink of a long overdue transformation,” said Ashish Munjal, co-founder and chief executive of Sunstone. “Sunstone is well positioned to enable this change and impact the lives of millions of students. Over the years, we have made significant progress in this direction, but we still have a long way to go, because the market opportunities and the problems that we are trying to solve are very important. »
The startup is currently focused on business schools, but is beginning to expand into engineering and other tech sectors, the founders said.
“Over the past year, we have seen Sunstone grow and continue to improve the quality of education provided to every student. Seeing the ever-increasing demand and its potential to be a major disruptor, we are delighted to double our investment to support its mission to transform the higher education sector in India,” said Sandeep Singhal, Managing Partner, WestBridge Capital , in a press release.
This is a developing story. More soon…
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