Former Unacademy COO working on edtech venture, raises $11 million: Reports

Omnichannel education forum Unacademy’s former COO Vivek Sinha has raised $11 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Matrix Partners, as per media reports.

Other investors participating in the investment round include Sinha’s former boss, Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal, Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo and Ramakant Sharma, co-founder of Livspace, as per sources quoted in the reports.

Sinha registered his new startup by the name of Beyond Odds in September this year and will be focusing on the upskilling segment in the healthcare industry, reports suggest.

Sinha could not be reached for a comment.

His foray into the category comes at a time when both health-tech and ed-tech sectors are facing industry challenges, governance issues and financial irregularities. Data provider Tracxn suggests edtech firms have raised around $700 million in 2023, down 70 per cent from $2.4 billion raised the previous year.

As per his LinkedIn profile, Sinha has 15 years of experience across diverse industries. He was part of Oyo as their Business Head, after which he joined as COO at Unacademy, valued at $3.5 billion.

Sinha led the full-stack P&L of multiple verticals at Unacademy, managing a team of about 4,000 employees. He also led the offline payments business at fintech firm Mobikwik. Vivek holds an MBA from ISB Hyderabad and a B.Tech from NIT Jamshedpur.

He co-founded Buildzar, a construction-tech platform that raised $5million in Series A funding, a huge part of the investment coming from Puneet Dalmia of Dalmia Cement (Bharat).

The company eventually shut down owing to failure in obtaining desired results.