An Indian startup has made its mission to bridge the gap between academic education and industrial demands. NxtWave is looking to generate one million new-age developers, every year.
Students graduating from educational institutes are finding it challenging to obtain a job owing to the changing dynamics of employment needs in a highly competitive market. According to an ASSOCHAM study, just 20% of the five million new graduates each year find work.
There is a shortage of industry-ready skills and a mismatch in supply and demand. But, Tier II, III, and IV college students are also finding it hard to engage with English-language online learning content on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and other platforms, resulting in poor learning and career outcomes. This is where NxtWave comes into play.
The Hyderabad-based firm, founded in September 2020 by Rahul Attuluri, Anupam Pedarla, and Sashank Gujjula, intends to bridge the gap between college education and industrial demands.
It upskills students, primarily from smaller towns, and prepares them for employment in Industry 4.0 technologies.
The NxtWave team has created a one-of-a-kind training module that combines online, vernacular, asynchronous, cohort-based training with bite-sized and consolidation learning to create transformative learning experiences. The goal is to produce one million new-age developers every year.
Rahul says, “We are addressing the issue of a lack of work-oriented technology course material in vernacular languages, as well as strong alignment to in-demand and expanding tech employment possibilities.”
It now offers professional paths in Telugu, Hindi, and English.
According to Rahul, the platform has implemented a reverse-engineered curriculum that emphasises hands-on learning and project-based learning.
Rahul explains, “Among our significant ongoing programmes are CCBP 4.0 (Continuous Career Building Sessions), Academy, and CCBP 4.0 Intensive projects.”
To make CCBP 4.0 programmes accessible to everyone, regardless of financial status, the firm is offering programmes with numerous payment structures such as pay-after-placement, EMIs, scholarships, and so on.
In addition, NxtWave is establishing India’s biggest 4.0 Tech Student Community and bringing together a mix of forward-thinking and tech-savvy brains from various universities. This community will function as an ecosystem to assist students in developing skills and professions in 4.0 technologies such as AI/ML, cyber security, and IoT. This network includes 2,50,000 students from 3,000+ colleges spread throughout 35 Indian states and UTs.
Rahul oversees product, content, and curriculum for a staff of 150 full-time employees and a few freelancers, while COO Anupam Pedarla oversees operations and Sashank Gujjula oversees customer experience.
Rahul earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from IIIT-Hyderabad. Prior to joining NxtWave, he served as CTO at iB Hubs and co-founded CyberEye.
While the Indian edtech market is vast, Rahul says NxtWave is concentrating on developing a trained workforce in 4.0 technologies such as full stack development, AI/ML, cyber security, IoT, AR/VR, Blockchain, and others.
According to the World Economic Forum, 4.0 technologies will produce 13.3 million new employment by 2022.
Rahul adds, “In our study, we observed that a substantial percentage (80 percent) of graduates are interested in learning innovative technologies, but there are a lot of entrance obstacles to explore existing alternatives. There are programmes that teach some of these 4.0 technologies to the top 1% or 2% of students, while the remainder of the students struggle to understand tech employment curriculum in English.”
NxtWave focuses on the remaining 98 percent of students and recent graduates, particularly from Tier II, III, and IV institutions and towns, who lack access to a high-quality learning ecosystem and have poor employability.
“NxtWave operates on an annual subscription basis, with income generated by the registration fee paid by applicants.”
The venture began with a Rs 10 lakh investment and promises to be a revenue-generating company from the outset.
At $10 million ARR, the cash-flow positive firm claims to have grown profitably by 12X in the previous ten months.
NxtWave’s goal is to produce highly skilled 4.0 professionals from 40 million college students and graduates between the ages of 18 and 23.
The team intends to directly transform one million adolescents over the next three years. Over the following year, the team plans to add support for more Indian vernacular languages such as Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Odia, as well as new career tracks in English, Hindi, and Telugu.
In addition to Indian languages, the business hopes to develop support for Southeast Asian languages such as Indonesian, Vietnamese, Filipino, and others.
