May 24, Bengaluru: Data science & machine learning focused ed-tech startup Jovian has recently announced that it has raised USD 1.5 million in seed funding. The funding round was led by Multiply Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Better Capital and prominent angels such as Kunal Shah, (Founder, CRED), Phanindra Sama, (Co-founder, redBus), Aprameya Radhakrishna, (Co-founder, Koo), Christian Oestlien, (Director, Product Management, YouTube), Anand Madhavan, (VP of Engineering, EverLaw), Aakrit Vaish, (Co-founder and CEO, Haptik), and Ankit Bhati, (Co-founder, Ola & Amnic). The fresh funds will be used to expand their team of data science experts to enhance their curriculum and provide mentorship to their growing student base. The company also plans to grow their engineering team and engage their data science community through courses, competitions, and learning resources.
Founded in 2019 by Aakash N S and Siddhant Ujjain, Jovian’s flagship Data Science & Machine Learning bootcamp helps working professionals in programming or analytics make a career transition to data science. The company also offers several free beginner-friendly courses and has a fast-growing community of 200,000+ users from 180+ countries.
Commenting on the announcement, Aakash N S, Co-founder and CEO of Jovian, said, “There is a large and growing demand for data science talent around the world, and university programs have not been able to keep up. On the other hand, many people already have most of the skills required to become a data scientist: programming, math, and analytical thinking. So, we’ve crafted a 6-month part-time job-oriented data science training program for working professionals to help fill this gap.”
Data science jobs are expected to grow globally to 25 million by 2025 and a large portion of those jobs is expected to come from India. Jovian is helping working professionals from STEM backgrounds upskill and make a career transition to data science. In the future, the company plans to offer programs for Data engineering, Deep Learning, and ML engineering.
Raveen Sastry, Founding Partner, Multiply Ventures said, “There is a massive shortage of data science talent globally and it’s doubling every 2 years. The engineers, researchers, and marketers of today will be the data scientists of tomorrow as increasing automation disrupts the jobs landscape over the next five years. Jovian solves this by upskilling industry professionals into data science professionals to reduce this massive gap. Upskilling is a continuous process and it’s a core tenet of our investment strategy at Multiply ventures.”
Jovian has developed an industry-focused curriculum for data science and machine learning in collaboration with domain experts. The program is designed for part-time learning, with weekly classes and live Q&A over chat and video calls. Learners also get access to 1:1 mentorship sessions with industry experts and engage in weekly group discussions with their peers in a university-like environment. Learners build guided real-world projects, receive support in Resume writing and interview preparation, and get access to opportunities from Jovian’s hiring partners and global alumni network. Companies hiring from Jovian include the likes of Decathlon, Deutsche Bank, Smith & Nephew, Octro, Citizens, Spinny, ObserveAI, LoveLocal, LeapFinance and many others. Jovian had earlier raised USD 450k in 2019, led by Arka Ventures, with participation from Better Capital, SenseAI Ventures and Axilor Ventures.
