Healthcare Edtech startup Virohan raises additional $1.3 mn from existing investors before its Series B 

New Delhi Hindustan ab tak/Dinesh Bhardwaj : 28 October A first of its kind, Healthcare Edtech startup Virohan, receives additional $1.3 mn in funding from its existing investors – Keiretsu Forum, Priya Shah (General Partner at Theia Ventures), Better Capital, Vikas Gambhir (Partner – Grant Thornton)  and Joydeep Battacharya (Partner – Bain & Co), before the Series B raise. 

Providing industry demand led training for Allied Healthcare Professionals (AHPs), Virohan is planning to utilize these funds to expand to new geographies PAN India. The startup is also planning to use new funds to develop newer training programs, content in vernacular languages and develop their technological forefront. The company aims to scale its current omnichannel training platform infrastructure and develop new features to further increase learning outcomes for students and facilitate growth over its expanding footprint with this bridge round. The additional funds bring Virohan’s total funding to $4.3 Mn  since its launch, including a series A round announced in May 2021 that saw participation from Rebright Partners. The company is also in talks to raise $7-$10 mn in Series B later this year. 

 Virohan was started with an idea to fix the failure in the traditional higher education system which is out of sync with industry demand. This edtech startup is making the higher education system demand-driven and standardizing training outcomes at scale. India needs about 40 million AHPs by the end of this decade, and as of today, only 10 million are employed, of which barely 7-8% are trained and certified. To address this staggering gap in AHPs, Nalin Saluja, Kunaal Dudeja and Archit Jayaswal teamed up to establish Virohan in 2018.

Virohan, which currently operates hybrid classrooms at campuses and online training across India in cities including Delhi, Faridabad, Pune, Raipur, Meerut and Nagpur, and has a number of distinguishing features but most notable are likely its tech-first approach and talent to fix the socio-economic problem so that industry demand and skilled workforce are in perfect equilibrium. The start-up has a technology-driven training platform, which is able to train personnel, both online and in their allied campuses. Its end-to-end proprietary ‘technology skill stack’ enables job prediction, aggregate training providers and standardizes processes across the student journey from mobilization to training content to placements. 

 Speaking on the announcement, Kunaal Dudeja, CEO & Co-founder states, “We are thrilled that our investors and the youth of our country believe in, and support the massive healthcare training need. Their decision of the investors to re-invest gives us a further vote of confidence on our goal to to train over 2,50,000 youth by 2025.”

Commenting on the investment, Priya Shah, General Partner at Theia Capital and one of the early mentors of Virohan said “We are excited to back the Virohan team on their transformative vision to train and empower India’s youth in seeking allied healthcare employment in top hospitals and clinics in the country through cutting-edge technology and blended learning tools”