Bengaluru, Karnataka, India | 13th November 2019: Sunstone Eduversity (owned by Sunstone Education Tech. Pvt. Ltd.) an edtech startup offering industry-ready higher education programs with Pay after Placement, has raised INR 11.3 crore in seed funding. The funding was led by Prime Venture Partners with participation from LetsVenture, PS1 Ventures and Rajul Garg. The company will use the fresh funds to build its network of colleges across various cities and strengthen its efforts in creating industry-ready professionals by investing in technology and curriculum. Sunstone is planning to achieve a 7x growth in student enrollments and add more than 2000 students across nine cities in 2020.
Founded by IMT-Ghaziabad alumnus Ashish Munjal and Piyush Nangru, Sunstone offers India’s only Pay-after-Placement formal education program in partnership with several colleges and private universities. Sunstone works closely with corporates to develop industry ready specializations such as BFSI, Logistics, Sales Management, Digital Marketing and others. These programs are designed to equip the students with the required expertise to tackle everyday business problems and build competencies across industry verticals. Currently, Sunstone has five partner institutions in three cities with 300 students enrolled and is planning to partner with 10 more colleges.
Sunstone’s unique Pay after Placement model allows students to focus on completing the course rather than worry about financing their higher education. At the time of enrollment, a nominal registration fee is charged for the 2-year full-time program. On completion of the course and only after getting a job, the student is required to pay the course fee which is ten times the monthly salary. Owing to this unique model, Sunstone has already received an overwhelming response from the students; this year Sunstone has selected 300 students from a total of 4200 applications.
According to a recent study, only 36.4% of MBA graduates are considered employable. Another alarming statistic shows that only 37% of MBA graduates across India are placed (according to the data from AICTE). Students who graduate from the top 100 colleges are employable, whereas students who graduate from 3900 other colleges are not taught the right skill sets and the education quality in general is low. The curriculum taught in most of these MBA colleges is mainly theoretical and hasn’t been updated for years. A recent study by UNICEF pointed out that half of South Asian youth will not be able to find a decent job for the lack of skills. According to the data, South Asia lags behind several other regions in preparing the next generation of young people with the skills they will need for 21st century work.
With the growing number of new-age businesses and dynamic job profiles, the requirement of graduates with a high-level domain knowledge and core competencies is the need of the hour. Sunstone works very closely with various corporates and actively seeks participation from corporate leaders in designing the curriculum. The industry-focused and constantly updated curriculum coupled with dual specializations ensure that the students at Sunstone Eduversity are job ready and have the desired skill sets that are in sync with the requirements of any industry. The goal of the company is to bring about a shift in the present higher education system by equipping the students with the latest and the best management principles, practices, theories and standards so that they are readily absorbed by the recruiters.
Supporting quotes
Ashish Munjal, Co-founder, Sunstone Eduversity
“We are making higher education accountable. Our model is able to produce industry ready professionals who can start contributing towards an organization’s success right from the beginning. This is the only higher education program where the success of the education provider is completely aligned with the student’s success.”
Amit Somani, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners
“Higher education in India has hardly seen any innovation whether in curriculum or in methodology in the last few decades. With one of the largest youth workforce in the world and rapidly evolving new-age jobs and businesses, there is a dire need for industry-ready professionals in India. Sunstone is addressing this with technology led pedagogy and a highly attractive business model; the Pay After Placement model brings in accountability for the students.”
