Sunstone, a higher education startup that works with academic institutions to help improve student employability, has raised $35 million in a new funding round as it aims to expand to more cities in India.

Sunstone founders said Friday that WestBridge Capital led the company’s Series C funding round. Alteria Capital also participated in the fundraising, bringing the total raised to date to approximately $68 million.

There are thousands of management colleges and institutions in India, but most fail to attract enough students, except for those at the top of the charts. I am struggling with

Founded in 2019, Sunstone is tackling these challenges by offering students a wide range of additional courses and helping them secure jobs, co-founder Piyush Nangru told TechCrunch in an interview.

“Universities are running at 40% occupancy. That’s the equivalent of a perishable inventory for them, which prevents them from amassing resources and lowers the quality of their education,” he said. We partner with these institutions to provide upskilling and soft skills courses, as well as campus life programs for students, to improve the quality of education for our students.”

As part of the partnership, the institution continues to provide hundreds of hours of “fundamental” classes to students. “For example, take an MBA. It’s a 900-hour program that covers core subjects like accounting, marketing, and finance. and the rest are industry-ready skills) are added to this,” he explained.

Piyush Nangru (left) and Ashish Munjal co-founded Sunstone in 2019.

Currently serving undergraduate and postgraduate students in over 40 institutions across nearly 30 cities in India, part of the value proposition of the New Delhi-based start-up is the We equalize quality and employment opportunities. partner.

Ashish Munjal, co-founder and CEO of Sunstone, said: “Sunstone is well positioned to enable this change and impact the lives of millions of students. Over the years, we have made great strides in this direction. But we still have a long way to go as the market opportunities and problems we are trying to solve are huge.”

After growing 10x in the last two years, Sunstone is now focusing on business colleges. The company is also beginning to expand into engineering and other technology areas, and that expansion is part of a plan to deploy new funding, the founders said.

“Over the past year, we have seen Sunstone grow and continue to improve the quality of education provided to all students. Recognizing that it will continue to grow and lead to significant disruption, we are excited to double down on our investment to support the company’s mission to transform the higher education sector in India.