TalentSprint raises Rs 20 cr funding

Hyderabad-based skill development company, TalentSprint, has raised Rs 20 crore ($4 million) in Series A equity funding from Nexus Venture Partners. Co-founded by Madhumurty Ronanki, Santanu Paul, and JA Chowdary, TalentSprint aims to skill 500,000 graduates by 2020.

TalentSprint, a partner company of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), offers employability programmes to young professionals using experiential learning and iPEARL, its proprietary technology platform. The company works closely with industry partners to deliver productivity and efficiency gains in excess of 70 per cent in terms of new talent acquisition.

Nexus is a venture capital fund with offices in India and Silicon Valley. It has $320 million under management and an active portfolio of over 35 companies across technology, internet, media, consumer, business services sectors.

“India has tripled the number of higher education seats since 2000 and will do so again between now and 2020. However, quality has become a massive challenge. Our solution combines rich content, industry-experienced instructors and technology-aided delivery to provide meaningful employability outcomes. The near-term goal is to integrate 100 colleges into the TalentSprint College Network,” the company’s chief executive officer and managing director, Santanu Paul, stated in a press release here on Wednesday.

According to Nexus managing director Anup Gupta, infusing quality into the higher education system is essential for India to be able to sustain its economic growth. The goal is enable up-skilling on a largescale without compromising on quality.

As part of this Series A investment, Anup Gupta will join the company’s board of directors.