*Aspire Human Capital Management *raised $4.5 million (nearly Rs 20 crore) US-based venture capital firm *Foundation Capital *for an un-disclosed stake.
The education services firm provides training in communication skills and spoken English. It will utilise the funds in expanding its operations to 25 cities from the present 14 cities in India. The company plans to expand its student base by three-fold from current 15,000 *Neeraj Bhargava*, co-founder of private equity firm, *Steer Capital*, has also invested in Aspire Foundation Capital's general partner *Warren Weiss,* Neeraj Bhargava and *Samit Sinha* will join the board of the company. Transaction Note Aspire uses a combination of software training tools and classroom coaching to test and train students and fresh graduates. It was founded by *Amit Bhatia*, former CEO of WNS, *Karandeep Singh* , MD, Sapient and *Sumer Datta *who leads Aamoksh Retirement Resorts. Aspire caters mainly to colleges, universities and corporates employing fresh graduates. Its solutions spread into the HR domain by finding training needs of employees. Aspire has a long list of distinguished advisors, enough to fill up a small bus (or Airbus in this case). It has also received earlier rounds of angel funding. Samit Sinha, founder of Alchemist Brand Consulting and Director of Aspire, may have be one of the angel investors. *Foundation Capital *is a US-based VC firm founded in 1995. Because of its vintage, most of its portfolio companies are tech companies but it also invests significantly in consumer, clean tech and healthcare verticals. It has recently made a second round investment in *Azure Power *along with *IFC *and *Helion Venture Partners.* Recently Speakwell English Academy got its second round of funding from Mumbai Angels, investing in the range of Rs 2 crore. Speakwell trains students in verbal English and public speaking. Other recent deals in the education sector have been in DRS International School, Pathways World School, IIT tutorial firm Resonance Eduventures and distance learning venture Manipal Universal Learning. -- Regards Hardik Shah -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""GLOBAL SPECULATORS"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalspeculators?hl=en.
