Bengaluru-based edtech startup Newton School has raised US$ 650,000 in a seed round of funding led by early-stage venture capital firm Nexus Venture Partners. The funding round also saw the participation of Unacademy founders Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh, US-based startup platform AngelList, Srinivas Anumolu founder of Upwork, veteran educationists Ajay Gupta and Sahil Aggarwal and K.Ganesh founder of GrowthStory. Newton School will use the raised capital to strengthen its product and expand its team.
Newton School is an online edtech platform that trains people to be highly skilled software developers and get them placed in top companies and startups as frontend, backend and full stack software developers among other roles. It has a six months long online training program with a unique pay after placement model under which the students are charged zero fees until they are placed with a minimum package of 6 LPA.
Founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneurs and college friends Nishant Chandra and Siddharth Maheshwari, Newton School aims to transform India into a global developer powerhouse through its highly personalised training platform. Nishant and Siddharth had a shared passion for education since their college days. After his MBA from IIM-C, Nishant let go of his lucrative job as a consultant to join Unacademy at an early stage.
“While software engineering is one of the highest paying and fastest growing career paths, access to quality software development training remains limited to students of few top colleges. With our unique pay after placement online platform we are democratising software development training and allowing people to cross financial and location barriers to achieve their dream of becoming a great software developer. Recently, Rohit – son of an auto driver who had lost his livelihood due to Corona – got placed in one of the top startups of India. He will now be able to take care of his family and pay off their loans. There are many students like him who have tripled or even quadrupled their salaries in just 6 months of studying on our platform,” said Siddharth Maheshwari, Co-Founder, Newton School.
Pratik Poddar, Principal, Nexus Venture Partners, added, “We have known Nishant and Siddharth for some time and love their grit and passion for education. Nishant was known as an exceptional leader since his Unacademy days where he worked across content, pedagogy and operations. With their product and community first thinking, within the first few months of execution, Newton School is showing great results and creating meaningful impact in lives of software engineering graduates and making hiring of great tech talent easier for companies. We look forward to the journey with Newton School where they are building an online academy and solving the deep problem of employability of graduates.”