- Premium Content It takes our newsroom weeks - if not months - to investigate and produce stories for our premium content. You can’t find them anywhere else.
Lokesh Choudhary · · 4 min readDespite Indian edtech firm’s 100% placement guarantee, students are stuck with debt and uncertainty
More than a dozen students are seeking refunds from Indian edtech firm Hero Vired after claiming that they couldn’t get job placements a year after attending its postgraduate courses.
The firm’s website touts a 100% placement record and its salespeople promote job guarantees to prospective users.
Photo credit: Tech in Asia
However, some students claimed to have paid as much as US$3,000 for each course. Still, they are now left with no jobs and struggling to pay back the loans offered by Hero Vired to finance the courses.
An internal document seen by Tech in Asia lists 68 students that are seeking refunds. We spoke to 15 of them to verify its authenticity.
In response to our questions, a senior manager from Hero Vired says that if a student doesn’t complete the course and their grades hover around 30% – the usual passing grade for courses in India – they are not eligible for the guarantee.
However, students who failed to attain this eligibility criteria tell Tech in Asia that even after several requests, Hero Vired was unable to provide mentors to help them improve their grades. The company claims to offer personalized mentor-mentee interactions.
The students added that the firm did not conduct doubt-clearing sessions on time, with some saying that they never happened. These sessions are often held for students to make clarifications about topics discussed in the courses.
Founded in 2020 by Akshay Munjal, Hero Vired offers online certification programs and courses covering topics such as data science, business analytics, finance, and full-stack development. According to LinkedIn, it employs more than 300 people.
Akshay Munjal is the grandson of Brijmohan Munjal, the founder of Hero Vired parent firm Hero Group. One of its other subsidiaries, Hero MotoCorp, is the largest manufacturer of bikes globally and previously had ties with Honda. As of March 2023, its revenue stood at US$4 billion.
Akshay Munjal, CEO of Hero Vired / Image credit: Hero Vired
In 2021, the group invested US$9.9 million into Hero Vired, which brought the total funds raised by the edtech startup to US$19.4 million.
Students in debt
“I lost my job during Covid and had to take out a loan to pay for this course,” one of the students tells Tech in Asia. They say that a company salesperson from Hero Vired advised them to take out a loan while claiming that they would receive a 100% placement guarantee and a 50% salary hike after completing the course.
Indian edtech firms caught in controversies
Stay ahead in Asia’s tech landscape
This is premium content. Subscribe to read the full story.
More than a dozen students say they were left jobless and in debt after paying for Hero Vired’s postgraduate courses.
We know this is not ideal. ⌛ Sign up in 20 seconds. Cancel anytime.
Our subscriber community includes professionals from these companies:
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
