NxtWave: In Just a Year of Its Launch, This Vernacular Ed-Tech Startup Acquired Paid Subscribers from more than 250 Districts

Hyderabad (Telanagana) [India], September 9: Launched in September 2020, NxtWave now has paid subscribers from more than 250 districts across India who have spent 175 million minutes on its learning platform so far. In the last four months, CCBP 4.0 learners have been hired by 125+ companies, including Amazon, Accenture, IBM, Bank of America, TCS, Deloitte and more.

Founded by alumni of IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur and IIIT Hyderabad, NxtWave is on a mission to produce 1 million new-age developers every year. The team, keeping in view all challenges of a learner, has designed a unique approach of vernacular, online, asynchronous & cohort-based training combined with bite-sized and consolidation learning to create transformative learning experiences.
Speaking about their mission, Rahul, Cofounder and CEO of NxtWave, said, “We are currently witnessing a hyper-growth phase of tech startups in India and across the globe. Just in 2021 alone, more than 26 startups have turned into Unicorns fueled by vaults of heavy funding. Tech and product-led growth are at the core of the growth of these startups. But the lack of a readily available workforce is leading to talent wars, with engineers receiving offers of 3X-4X their current salaries or multiple salary hikes in a year as a retention strategy.

On the other hand, more than 60% of graduates remain unemployed in the country even after finishing college. Even those who are finding jobs are settling for smaller opportunities and lower salaries than their capabilities.

There is a huge gap between what students are learning at colleges and the industry requirements at the moment. At NxtWave, we want to bridge this gap with structured
CCBP 4.0 Programs that are outcome-driven.

Channelling youth's energy in the right direction and bringing outcomes has been one of the biggest challenges for our country. If it is properly harnessed, this large demographic dividend of youth can put India among the global leaders.”

Creating for Bharath and its Next Billion

NxtWave focuses on the other 98% of students and recent graduates primarily from Tier 2, 3, 4 colleges and towns, lack access to a quality learning ecosystem, and suffer from very low employability.

“We believe that the Digital Pedagogy must be radically different for these next billion users to create transformative learning experiences. To achieve this, we have adopted a multi-pronged approach in designing our Continuous Career Building Programs leveraging technology, pedagogy and vernacular content,” says Rahul.

Breaking All Barriers

Through its structured CCBP 4.0 Academy and CCBP 4.0 Intensive programs, NxtWave has designed curricula to make any individual industry-ready.

By offering vernacular content and interactive learning, NxtWave is breaking the language and entry barrier for learning tech skills. The team observed that learning in mother tongue is helping learners achieve higher comprehension, deeper attention, longer retention and greater outcomes.

With a reverse-engineered curriculum, NxtWave focuses on a hands-on approach and project-based learning. Industry-level projects give the necessary exposure to build exactly those skills that companies hire for.

Keeping in mind the philosophy of building for Bharat, NxtWave has designed its learning platform to remove beginners' hassle in their learning process.

For instance, using the Codeplayground on the platform, learners can write, run their code and host web applications in a few seconds without any hassle of downloading and installing tens of software packages. It helps the learners practise programming even on a low-cost laptop with basic specs.

Another unique aspect of NxtWave programs is Exponential Performance Mindset Training which transforms the learner’s mindset for high personal and professional growth. This training includes instilling a growth mindset, developing the right identity, and more, which results in accelerated learning and raises the bar of an individual’s performance.

“We’ve been successful in breaking all the barriers to learning the right skills and achieving a tech job. Along the way, we are also breaking many myths. Our CCBP 4.0 learners who are now in successful high-paying tech jobs have started with us from non-engineering degrees, non-metros and without any programming background. We also have graduates who found a job with 5 to 8-year career gaps and students who are first-generation college-goers in their villages,” added Rahul.

CCBP 4.0 programs have achieved a high rating of 4.7/5 from learners with over 1,25,000 ratings.

Building India’s Largest 4.0 Tech Student Community

At the same time, NxtWave is building India's largest 4.0 Tech Student Community and bringing together a group of forward-thinking and tech-savvy minds.

‍This community serves as an ecosystem to help students build skills and careers in 4.0 technologies like AI/ML, Cyber Security, IoT, Data Science, AR/VR, Blockchain, Fullstack De and more. Currently, 1,50,000 students from over 3,000 colleges across 35 Indian states & UTs are a part of the community.

Growth Plans and Future Roadmap

NxtWave aims to empower 40 million college students and recent graduates, between the age groups of 18 – 23, into highly skilled professionals in 4.0 technologies. In the next three years, the team plans to transform 1 Million youth directly.

In the next year, the team is working on adding support for more Indian vernacular languages like Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Odia, and more career tracks in English, Hindi and Telugu. Apart from Indian languages, the startup is looking to add support for Southeast Asian languages like Indonesian, Vietnamese, Filipino and more.