Exclusive: Virtual technology lab provider Nuvepro to raise bridge round from 1Crowd

Bangalore-based cloud labs Nuvepro Technologies, which makes cloud-based technology labs available to enterprises, edtech platforms, and universities, is raising Rs 4 crore (a little over $520,000 at current exchange rates) in a bridge round from early stage investment firm 1Crowd.

Nuvepro will invest the fresh capital primarily to beef up its sales team and build new types of labs, Giridhar LV, CEO, Nuvepro, told TechCircle.

With its SaaS-based learning labs, Nuvepro helps enterprises upskill, re-skill and assess employees. Online education platforms use the labs to offer technology labs for their learners and universities offer practice labs to their students.

The startup provides three types of labs -- playground labs, guided labs, and challenge labs. 

Playground labs are applicable to learners who are in an instructor-led training (ILT) course where activities are defined by the instructor or content owner. Nuvepro provides pre-configured labs with the tools and packages tailored to the course. Guided labs are for self-paced learners. Course content may be in the form of a video from any MOOC provider. The labs are pre-configured to match the course requirements along with video guides. Challenge labs are designed for learners solving a challenge, such as an assessment or a hackathon. Nuvepro provides the framework to grade the submissions.

“The remote labs were initially set up to address the edtech scenario, but as many university classes have moved online, we are getting a lot of traction for virtual labs. We are helping them move their lab environments online. The entire offering is automated end-to-end,” Giridhar said.

Under these broad categories, the startup has set up over 250 labs for more than 50 clients. Its clientele includes TCS, MindTree, Visa, Mphasis Simplilearn, UpGrad, and Edureka.

The company was founded in 2014 by Giridhar, Janakiraman Srinivasan, Umesh Bhatt, Moyukh Goswami and Rajesh Vasudevan. It was launched as a managed cloud environment solution service. The startup enabled organisations to improve cloud adoption and utilisation by providing ready-to-use infrastructure and applications. Nuvepro pivoted to its current business model about two years back.

The bridge round takes the company’s overall funding to Rs 12.5 crore.

Returning investor 1Crowd, owned by Mumbai-based Zeva Capsol, currently runs a sector agnostic early stage investment platform and a fund. The fund co-invests alongside the investor community registered with the platform. As the team identifies potential opportunities, the fund commits 50% of the deal ticket size upfront. The remainder is offered to investors on the platform.

1Crowd marked the second close of its debut angel fund at Rs 50 crore or approximately $7 million in December last year. The SEBI-registered fund has a target corpus of Rs 75 crore ($10.5 mn) including a greenshoe option of Rs 25 crore ($3.5 mn).