AcadGild wants to tackle the shortage of IT professionals with an online training portal that connects learners in the United States with mentors from India.
If the concept sounds familiar to TutorVista you are right. AcadGild is founded by Krishnan and Meena Ganesh. For this new edtech venture they are joined by inventor and venture capitalist Vinod Dham who is often referred to as the “Father of the Pentium chip” and will take on the role of CEO.
As The Economic Times reports, the non-compete agreement between Pearson and Krishnan and Meena Ganesh ends in February. TutorVista was sold to the publisher for $213 million two years ago.
In April 2014 the Ganesh’s made their first step back into the online education space by acquiring Avagmah, an online school for working professionals, for an undisclosed amount.
Dham himself also has a successful entrepreneurial track record. He sold two of his companies for $1.2 billion and $837 million and was Intel’s lead in the Pentium chip project.
AcadGild offers three months courses priced at $725. The initial market focus in on clients in the United States and India with plans to expand into other English speaking countries like Australia, the UK, and Canada. China which sees a growing number of English speaking learners is also an option, says Vinod Dham.
With its offering AcadGild enters the highly competitive US IT education market that is currently under consolidation. Pluralsight and lynda.com which both raised massive rounds of venture capital in 2014 and this year are currently in a race to acquire smaller competitors that add to their content portfolio and reach.
AcadGild’s offer is a bit different though as the startup sets its focus on working with a mentor and not so much on self paced learning based on video lessons of above mentioned companies. The startup aims for a mentor to student ratio of 1:3. This makes the courses also much more expensive compared to the subscription models of Pluralsight and lynda.com.
Further Reading
- Vinod Dham makes a comeback, to start an online technology education startup Acadgild | The Economic Times