The Skill EnablersNishant Chandra & Siddharth Maheshwari, 30, Co-founders, Newton School

Nishant Chandra completed his B.Tech from IIT Roorkee and then went on to do an MBA from IIM Calcutta. He has always been passionate about entrepreneurship, which found momentum when he was the Secretary of the Entrepreneurship Development Cell and also founded two ed-tech startups while studying at IIT Roorkee. After his stint at Unacademy (an edtech unicorn) having experienced the dynamics of ed-tech in India, Nishant co-founded Bolo, a video-based mentorship startup with Siddharth Maheshwari, his current co-founder, and college friend from IIT Roorkee.

During this time, the duo identified a large demand for mentors from students of Tier 2 and 3 colleges. Upon evaluating this further, Nishant and Siddharth discovered that these students lacked the necessary industry skills to get good jobs. Furthermore, they also observed that many students who received personal mentorship sessions were able to secure jobs with 3X-5X more salaries than what their colleges could offer. Nishant and Siddharth came to understand that while these students had potential, the education system was not providing them with the skills they needed to succeed in the tech industry. It was from this realization that they decided to create Newton School, a full-fledged learning platform. The goal of Newton School is to cater to students from all backgrounds and provide them with the opportunity to develop the skills required for getting jobs in the tech industry. By reverse-engineering the demands of the industry, Newton School has created a model with a comprehensive curriculum and industry-experienced mentors. Newton School is an online neo-university that is focused on outcome-oriented tech education for working professionals and freshers looking to make a bright career in tech.

Talking about the venture, the duo says, "What we are trying to solve is the problem of upskilling as per what the industry demands. We have built our entire curriculum and learning pedagogy in collaboration with software engineers, developers, and data scientists from the top companies of the world. All the instructors, mentors, interviewers, and other resource professionals are currently working as software developers or data scientists in Fortune 500 companies. We have a combination of instructors, mentors, interviewers, content developers, and competitive coders to teach and guide the students through live classes, mentorship sessions, mock interviews, and dynamic projects, as well as fun competitive coding contests. We use AI and machine learning technologies to aid our students' learning journey and analyze industry trends so that we can prepare our students for job market fluctuations."

Newton School has built the careers of more than 2500 students to this date, from all over the country. They partnered with over 2000+ companies including Google, Flipkart, Zomato, Xiaomi, Genpact, Dream11, Airtel, Byju's, PolicyBazaar, Meesho, Lenskart, Target, Thoughtworks, and Deloitte, among many others. Newton School also partnered with the Government of Goa to train 10,000 Goans to become Software Developers. They also launched a recruitment portal for startups and corporates aspiring to hire our tech graduates. The portal creates a seamless talent acquisition experience for companies and onboarded over 800 companies in just a few months since the portal's launch. The startup plans to increase its employee headcount to 600 by 2023 and generate $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 2023.

Factsheet

· Year of inception of the company: 2019

· Number of employees: 304

. Investors: Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, and RTP Global