byteXL, a Hyderabad-based education technology company that works inside engineering colleges, has raised $9 million (about ₹86.7 crore) in a round led by impact investor Elevar Equity, as it looks to take technology and artificial intelligence training to three times as many campuses over the next two years.
Existing investors Kalaari Capital and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation also took part in the round, which the company announced on 7 October. LoEstro Advisors acted as financial adviser on the deal.
The company plans to grow from 40 partner institutions to 120, and from about 2 lakh (200,000) students to 5 lakh (500,000) across 15 states, according to Inc42 and the company's announcement. It said the money will go into widening its college network, strengthening its AI-led learning platform, building academic and delivery teams, and launching new industry-aligned programmes.
Skilling inside the degree, not after it
byteXL was founded in 2019 by brothers Karun and Sricharan Tadepalli. Unlike most consumer edtech companies, which sell courses directly to students or job seekers, it sells to colleges. Its model places an industry-aligned curriculum, hands-on learning modules, technology platforms and trained educators within an institution's existing academic programme.
The distinction matters for students. Rather than paying separately for a coding bootcamp or a placement course after graduation, students at partner colleges receive the training as part of their four-year engineering course. Tech Observer described this as skilling delivered within the curriculum rather than as a paid add-on.
The company concentrates on engineering colleges in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, where faculty may have limited exposure to fast-changing industry tools and where large employers recruit less often. byteXL said 7,600 of its graduates were placed in IT and engineering roles last year.
Gaurav Jain, who heads university success in India for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, said many students at these colleges are the first in their families to reach higher education. “For many young people from underserved communities, an engineering degree represents more than a qualification; it represents the possibility of a better economic future through a well-paying job and strong career,” he said.
Jain added that these colleges are home to many first-generation students who see higher education as a route to greater opportunity for themselves and their families. In his view, byteXL brings industry-aligned, hands-on technology and AI learning directly into the college experience, helping students get hired and keep progressing in their careers, and the foundation's continued investment is meant to extend that access to more students.
The gap byteXL is targeting is well known. India turns out about 15 lakh engineering graduates a year, Tech Observer noted, yet employers have long complained that many need significant retraining before they are productive. The rapid spread of generative AI tools in software work has widened that gap, as entry-level roles shift towards skills that most college syllabi do not yet cover.
Part of the new money will go into product. The company said it will build AI-enabled learning and assessment tools, student analytics and personalised learning features, which would let colleges track how individual students are progressing and where they need help.
Investors coming back for more
The round is the second time Kalaari has backed the company. In July 2024 it led byteXL's $5.9 million Series A, with the Dell Foundation also participating. Sampath P, a partner at Kalaari Capital, said the firm's confidence came partly from rapid growth in the business and its ability to achieve profitability. The company did not disclose revenue or profit figures.
“byteXL's differentiation lies in its unique model and proprietary technology platform, enabling it to work within the existing college system and make industry-relevant technology education a part of the student's four-year journey, rather than an additional layer of training,” Sampath said.
He added that the approach lets byteXL serve a large and underserved need by working within the existing engineering education system rather than trying to rebuild it. That is a meaningful point in a sector where several well-funded consumer edtech companies struggled after the pandemic, when the cost of finding paying students one at a time proved hard to sustain.
Elevar Equity, the new lead investor, says its investment approach centres on backing scalable models that accelerate the economic momentum of what it calls entrepreneurial households. Sandeep Farias, Elevar's founder and managing partner, said quality education and employability rank among the highest-priority investments for such households, particularly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 communities.
Farias said byteXL stood out for its institutional integration and its potential to build a scalable, differentiated platform for tech talent across non-metro India. For an impact-oriented fund, a model that reaches students through colleges rather than through paid marketing to individuals also tends to lower the cost of acquiring each learner.
Karun Tadepalli, co-founder and chief executive, said the company had grown from proving its model with engineering institutions to building a scalable business in skilling. “As we enter our next phase of growth, our focus will be on expanding our institutional footprint, deepening our technology and AI capabilities, and building byteXL into a larger and more impactful player in India's technology education ecosystem,” he said.
A crowded and consolidating field
byteXL operates in a busy segment. Inc42 listed Emversity, Seekho.ai, SmartBridge, iNurture, Board Infinity and Imarticus Learning among companies working on skilling and employability. Several of them also partner with colleges or universities, and the large IT services companies run their own campus training programmes.
The wider edtech sector is consolidating. Inc42 counted three edtech acquisitions in the July to September quarter of 2026, including upGrad's purchase of Unacademy for $200 million to $210 million and Imarticus Learning's $84 million acquisition of BELLS. It also cited IMARC estimates that India's edtech market will grow from $4.6 billion in 2026 to $33.31 billion by 2034.
For byteXL, the risks lie in execution. Tripling the number of partner colleges in two years means hiring and training many more educators, keeping quality consistent across campuses in 15 states, and persuading college managements, which often work with tight budgets, to pay for a programme over several years. Placement outcomes, which depend partly on the hiring cycles of IT companies, will remain the yardstick on which colleges and students judge the service.
Still, with investors pointing to its ability to achieve profitability, two returning backers and a new lead focused on economic mobility, the company enters its next phase with capital and a clear target: 120 colleges and half a million students by 2028. Whether those students emerge with skills that employers in an AI-shaped job market will pay for is the result that will matter most.
