After 9 applications, this startup won YC support to upskill engineers

Engineering students who are fresh out of college often struggle to meet the expectations of their employers. More often than not, this stems from a gap between the skills they learned in school and those that are required to make them competitive in the workplace.

Skill-Lync, an edtech startup based out of Chennai, aims to bridge this gap.

Skill-Lync founders Suryanarayanan Paneerselvam (left) and Sarangarajan Iyengar / Photo credit: Skill-Lync

The company offers programs that provide engineering students in Asia with industry-relevant coursework developed by experts.

The startup was established in 2018 by CEO Suryanarayanan Paneerselvam and chief technology officer Sarangarajan Iyengar. But the duo first discovered the idea as early as 2013 while taking up their postgraduate degrees in mechanical engineering in the US. Back then, they experienced firsthand the drawbacks of India’s undergraduate programs, which often lacked application-based learning.

“We found it extremely difficult to cope with the expectations at our master’s degree,” Paneerselvam shares. “And the interesting thing was, we found the same [thing] happening with all other Indian and Asian students who came to [the US to] pursue their master’s.”

Initially created as a YouTube channel, Skill-Lync was positioned as a business-to-business platform that provides value-added courses to higher-education institutions. After signing up 12 colleges to the platform within two years, Paneerselvam and Iyengar worked up the courage to quit their well-paying jobs and moved back to India in 2016 to scale the startup.

Engineering a bridge

Skill-Lync today has sales offices in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Dusseldorf in Germany. It offers career programs in mechanical, electrical, electronics, and civil engineering, with its master’s course in electric vehicle design and simulations soon to be released.

Interested students can avail of a live demo before enrolling in its courses, which cost about US$3,000 on average.

According to Paneerselvam, what sets Skill-Lync apart is its 24/7 live support for students. “You can have a great course taught by one of the best experts in the world, but if the student does not understand the first two videos/classes, then he will not complete the coursework,” the CEO says.

The one-to-one support feature allows the company to better understand its students and answer their questions directly. This has helped Skill-Lync achieve a course completion rate of around 77%, well above the industry average of 8% to 15%, Paneerselvam says.

Photo credit: Skill-Lync

Skill-Lync targets students who are 18 to 26 years old. About 8 million engineers in India fall within this range, representing a market size of around US$18 billion in the country alone.