Antler India announced today that it has invested in Invact Metaversity, a platform built at the intersection of education and Web3, as part of a USD 5 million seed round.

Antler India invested alongside other global institutional investors like Arkam Ventures (lead investor) from India, Picus Capital (Germany), M Venture Partners (Singapore), BECO Capital (Dubai) and 2am VC (USA).

Founded by Manish Maheshwari (former Head of Twitter India) and Tanay Pratap (a highly popular educator), the company provides employability-focused training to help the workforce realign with the digital world and secure themselves jobs in high-growth tech companies. The university is being built in the metaverse in order to foster an immersive, serendipitous environment conducive to learning.

In parallel, the startup has also raised capital from 70+ notable individuals such as Balaji Srinivasan (former CTO of Coinbase and GP at Andreessen Horowitz), Caesar Sengupta (former VP and General Manager of Payments & the Next Billion Users initiative at Google), Nithin Kamath (founder, Zerodha), Kunal Bahl (founder, Snapdeal), Benjamin Ampen (Managing Director Twitter MENA) and influencer Gregory Orosz (author of ‘The Pragmatic Engineer’), Punit Soni (former CPO of Flipkart and Founder of Suki) and Akshay Kothari (Notion).

According to Manish Maheshwari, Founder & CEO at Invact, “Metaverse is a concept that stands at a cusp where it will be a lead factor in transforming the educational landscape. We will use this investment to bolster the product and technology team for the Metaversity platform, build a virtual-first curriculum and expand into Europe and the US.”

"I've always believed that education, rather than being a privilege, should be a right. Our vision at Metaversity is not only to democratize education but also to provide high-quality learning at an affordable cost. I am grateful that such well-known names are helping us on our journey", added Tanay Pratap, Founder & CTO.

Invact Metaversity aims to make education more accessible and inclusive, providing the real-time experience of attending a university in a virtual world. With emphasis on creating a social and community layer, the platform is built to help give students a real university feel in the virtual world like entering a classroom, hanging out with peers at the campus, and more.

“We are excited to be one of the first believers in Manish and Tanay’s vision. We believe it is time for a new generation of edtech platforms built in India for the world, and especially ones that will offer life-altering outcomes through upskilling and premium employability with a superior pedagogical approach. We also believe such platforms will harness the power of Web3 and the metaverse to create entirely new interactions and truly global communities. Edtech and Web3 are both areas we have invested in for a long time, and in Manish and Tanay, we found a team with huge followings, and proven track records of building scaled communities, products and businesses”, added Nitin Sharma, Partner and co-founder at Antler India.

“Education as we know it is undergoing a massive transformation. As we move towards a decentralized future, it is imperative to envision how something as critical as education is going to pan out. Manish and Tanay form a solid team that is uniquely positioned to spearhead this space in India - with a deep understanding of student behaviour coupled with strong engineering expertise. With focus on making education more accessible and inclusive, we’re excited to see how Invact Metaversity disrupts education in the country”, added Rajiv Srivatsa, Partner and co-founder at Antler India.

Global early-stage VC firm Antler is one of the fastest growing VC firms in the world and plans to deploy $100M to $150M in 100+ Indian startups over the next 3 years.