$2.8 Million of Seed and Series A Funding Raised by Virohan to Scale Online Health Education to Millions in India

Gurgaon based leading healthcare vocational institute Virohan Pvt. Ltd. today announced raising $2.8mn across seed and series A funding. As part of the total fund raise, the seed round was led by Keiretsu Forum and series A round was led by the elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalisation and by the Singh Family Trusts, advised by Artha Impact with participation from founders and National Skill Development Corporation.

A training partner of NSDC and a Yunus Social business Investee company, Virohan works with GE Healthcare and the Indian Medical Association (IMA) among others across India to provide youth with a career in the healthcare sector and make available trained workforce to the industry.

The fresh investment round will enable Virohan to continue to introduce and expand new virtual technologies in the vocational training segment allowing for greater accessibility, scalability and immersion at affordable costs. Specifically, the company will also use funding to expand their content library by introducing standardised content to students in 15 additional languages and grow its partnerships from dozens to hundreds of institutions. Virohan’s vision is to educate more than a million students by 2025 through its best-in-class blended learning platform.

Due to the ongoing crisis, there is tremendous demand for healthcare workers across the world and the need for which will grow exponentially over the next decade as well. Despite a huge demand for their services, this sector is highly fragmented in India. There are massive predicted shortages across operating theatre technicians, radiology technicians and medical lab technicians. To combat this crisis, Virohan uses its standardised training model to rapidly train and connect its users with these fast-growing jobs in the healthcare industry. 

The startup was incorporated in 2018 by the founders, Kunaal Dudeja (Co-founder & CEO), Nalin Saluja (Co-founder & CTO) and Archit Jayaswal (Co-Founder & CFO). Virohan bridges the gap between industry demand and the skills of the workforce by using its ‘technology skill stack’ through which they predict job demand for each job role across India, builds out the curriculum needed and delivers standardised training through blended and online learning.

The courses offered emphasise on development of core technical skills, language abilities, and life skills in the student through gamified blended learning delivered by its facilitators in classrooms or purely online on its myCareer app. All programs include long internships at hospitals for hands-on practice of the skills acquired. Virohan is a fee-based model and in order to encourage young people to join, financial linkages are provided with easy instalment-based payback options after a job is secured by the users

The startup founders issued a joint statement:

“Workforce readiness is a huge problem in India. There is a huge disconnect between demand and supply of the skills in the workforce across sectors forcing youth to compromise on aspirations, income and location. We are thrilled to have the support of our incredible investors as we build the most efficient and scalable learning platform for current and future healthcare professionals.”

Speaking on the investment, Lead investors at elea Foundation and Artha Impact commented,“We are excited to add another innovative model in employable skill building to our portfolios. Giving students access to quality education, equipping them with the professional and life skills to successfully contribute to India’s healthcare sector is creating long-term impact for youth who, through Virohan, can attain aspirational jobs with a career trajectory. As active investors, we are very much looking forward to working with Virohan’s founders and management team in the years to come, providing strategic support and sector-specific insights.”

As part of the previous round, the company had also raised debt funding worth $270,000  from Yunus Social Business in January 2020.

Providing skill enhancement training for healthcare practitioners, Virohan has trained over 3,000 students and has a tremendous placement rate of >85%. The Edtech startup is rapidly expanding its national footprint ever since the lockdown began. It has already started its training completely online while expanding its presence to over 20 cities in the last 5 months.