Established with a vision to bring about innovation in higher education and learning in emerging areas of the knowledge society, the University of the Future, NIIT University (NU), hosted the first Founders Growth camp on its campus in Neemrana from Nov 16 th – 18 th 2022. Early stage EdTech founders Videt Jaiswal from Airblack, Arman Ahmed from EdYoda, Jatin Solanki from Expertrons, Manvender Singh from INSAID, Jignesh Talasila from PerspectAI, Pratik Agarwal from School of Accelerated Learning, Simulanis, Raman Talwar from uLektz Learning Solutions &Rashmi Jha from vani. coach, participated in the 3-day Growthcamp.
The first-of-its-kind EdTech Growth camp had a great mix of startups working on solving
interesting problems in the higher education and upskilling space. The participating founders got an opportunity to pitch their ideas before the angel investors. industry leaders and experts. Investors from 5 investment firms – Omidyar Ventures, Chiratae, Titan Capital,
Indian Angel Network Fund and Lead Angels Network, attended the Growthcamp. All 9 founders have been directly inducted into Microsoft Founders Hub and will be getting significant benefits and support from Microsoft. They will also get access to up to $150K in
Azure credits, free access to Microsoft productivity tools as well as its extensive mentor network.
NIIT University also found strong synergies with the participating start-ups and would be
actively exploring collaboration opportunities with them. The investors were impressed by the participating founders and will pursue the discussions further.
The Founders Growth camp is the culmination of the EdTech Growth Summit that was organised by NU last montht o chart a growth path for emerging EdTech leaders in the higher education and skilling space. Drawing upon the legacy of the NIIT Group, the first of its kind Growth camp has been organised in consultation with industry experts and top investors to support promising Edtech start-ups accelerate growth through knowledge sessions, mentorship, funding opportunities, and more.
Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman & Co-founder, NIIT Group said, “In my opinion EdTech is probably one of the toughest sectors, for creating a technology platform to enable learning is not easy. Each learner learns differently, each teacher has their own style of teaching. Every transaction is distinctive and unique, therefore, to be successful in this space it is important to have innovative ideas and good technology. The sector in India is currently faced with funding crunch which is hitting the early stage start-ups the hardest. Since our whole focus for the last 40 years has been on education, we would like to take the lead in building an ecosystem to help these young start-ups to transition through this difficult phase by mentoring and guiding them and providingthem with funding support.”