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Pune-headquartered edtech startup ImaginXP on Monday announced it has raised $1.5 million in funding led by Venture Catalysts, along with co-investors Shashank Deshpande, Krish Kupathil, Samyakth Capital, and others.

In a statement, the startup said it aims to utilise the fresh funds to accelerate growth in its B2B higher education model. The current round of funding is aimed at accelerating both offline and online degree programmes.

Started in 2013 by Shashank Shwet and led by Col. Shishir Kumar, ImaginXP aims to make its partners successful in closing the employability gap.

The B2B, B2C, and D2C startup seeks to fill the employability skill gap for students by collaborating with universities such as Chitkara University, DIT University, and Jagran Lakecity University.

ImaginXP provides Bachelor of Design (B.Des), Master of Design (M.Des), BBA, MBA, BSc, and BTech degree programmes in partnership with universities.

“3.7 crore students in India pay $7 billion in tuition fees and our mission is to provide them with global quality education at university campuses and online courses,” said ImaginXP’s Shashank. “Our test of time was during the pandemic when the traditional university model got disrupted. We quickly scaled up our digital platform MyCoach to provide for-credit courses to the universities and engage the students on their behalf.”

ImaginXP helps universities provide future skills degree programmes and for-credit certification courses with a corporate-led curriculum, trained faculty, and a coaching platform that brings more than 1,250 corporate coaches-led mentorship and live projects for students. The focus is on student outcomes by enabling universities to provide world-class education in India.

Within three years the company claims to have partnered with 22 universities across the country and employs more than 70 full-time faculty members; over 1,250 working professionals act as corporate coaches on the MyCoach platform to train, mentor, and create work-like environments on projects to increase student employability. 

“ImaginXP is partnering with universities to give them access to a world-class curriculum with an industry-partnered delivery model,” said ImaginXP Director General Col. Shishir Kumar. “The success of universities is the success of ImaginXP.” 

“We aim at making our partners feature in the top 500 universities of the world,” he added.

Commenting on the investment, Venture Catalysts Co-founder AnujGolecha said:

“ImaginXP has a proven revenue model with universities to help them increase their capacity by providing future skills and a focus on student RoI (return on investment). The MyCoach platform with such a huge captive TAM (total addressable market) and online degrees has digitally accelerated the company to a three times growth trajectory over the last two years. The impressive hold over the higher education market led us to partner with the team.”