Elevate Education is a Gurugram-based higher education platform that works with colleges and universities to run undergraduate and postgraduate programmes with technology, placements, and student support built in. It’s chasing a simple problem: tons of students leave college with a degree, but not enough job-ready skills or a clear path into employment. That’s why this Elevate Education funding round matters. On July 8, 2026, the company — formerly Sunstone, and started in 2019 by Ashish Munjal, Piyush Nangru, and Ankur Jain — raised ₹170 crore, or about $17.7 million, in a Series D round led by WestBridge Capital.
Back in August 2022, the company raised $35 million in Series C funding, also led by WestBridge, with participation from Alteria Capital. This new cheque gives Elevate more room to build its tech stack and push harder on AI. It also plans to add more partner institutions and tighten the link between classroom learning and actual student outcomes.
What does Elevate Education do?
Elevate Education partners with an existing college or university, lets that institution deliver the accredited degree, and then layers its own operating system on top of the student journey. That means curriculum inputs and admissions support. It also includes career services, placement prep, and technology tools that track progress from enrolment to hiring. WestBridge has described the older Sunstone model as a university-partnership business that manages admissions, curriculum, and placements around affiliated degree programmes.
For students, the experience is a lot more structured than the standard “join college and hope placements work out” playbook. Elevate’s programmes are built around live projects and mentorship. They also include soft-skills training, mock interviews, resume work, and industry-aligned coursework in areas like management and computer applications. Some tracks use AI-integrated coursework and project-based learning rather than a purely lecture-heavy setup.
What it removes is manual fragmentation. In a typical college, the academic degree, skills training, and placement cell often sit in separate silos. Elevate tries to stitch those pieces together into one managed workflow. It also uses data to track how students are doing and where support is breaking down. That’s a more useful pitch than shiny AI buzzwords.
Who founded Elevate Education and why?
The founding story
Elevate began life as Sunstone in 2019. The founding idea came from a blunt observation: students were graduating, but many weren’t getting the skills, exposure, or opportunities needed to land decent jobs. That gap between degree education and employability still defines the company’s thesis.
Why the founders fit this market
Ashish Munjal, the co-founder and CEO, had already spent time in consulting, investment banking, cloud telephony, and startup building before starting Sunstone. His earlier work included Bank of America and Knowlarity. At Crownit, he co-founded the company and led consumer and business growth. Piyush Nangru, now COO, was a founding member at Crownit and handled marketing and business development there before moving into higher education.
Ankur Jain, the third co-founder and current CBO, brings a different angle. He has worked across Amazon, Airtel, and YourStory. He also founded HostelFund. That matters because Elevate isn’t just an education brand — it’s also a distribution and outcomes machine, with a heavy sales component.
What they built before this
This team didn’t come into the category as lifelong academics. That may have helped. Munjal and Nangru came out of startup operating roles, not university administration, which helps explain why the company looks more like a managed services platform than a traditional edtech app. Their prior experience at Crownit also suggests they’d already worked through the messy stuff that kills young companies. Acquisition, operations, execution discipline.
Traction and fundraising
Elevate now supports more than 25,000 active students and works across 22 campuses in 15 cities. It expects revenue of ₹300 crore in FY27 and wants to hit profitability in the same year. By FY29, the target is 60,000 students and 40 partner institutions. That’s a sharp jump.
The funding history shows that WestBridge hasn’t treated this like a one-off bet. It backed the company in Series C in August 2022 and has now led the Series D round as well. Repeat backing like that usually means the investor likes what it’s seeing in execution, not just the category story.
How Elevate Education stacks up against rivals
The closest rivals aren’t all pure online edtech firms. Some comparisons sit in adjacent models: upGrad runs university partnerships and programmes for college students. Scaler has moved into career-led higher education with its School of Technology. Companies like FACE Prep work as employability and skilling partners for institutions.
Elevate’s edge is that it sits deeper inside the college experience than a standalone skilling vendor, while staying more asset-light than building its own university from scratch. The old alternative it’s trying to beat is still common across India — a college degree, a weak placement office, outdated curriculum, and students paying extra elsewhere for job prep. If Elevate can standardise outcomes across partner campuses, that’s the moat investors are backing.
Why does Elevate Education funding matter?
This round matters because it’s not just survival capital. Elevate says the money will go into technology and AI capabilities. It also plans to expand its partner network, strengthen student outcomes, and tie academic programmes more tightly to industry needs. That’s a pretty specific roadmap.
The AI piece isn’t random. The company has already leaned into AI-linked coursework and data tracking around the student journey. Fresh capital gives it a chance to push that further into learning, engagement, and career support instead of treating AI like a marketing sticker.
There’s also a timing angle here. Many edtech names spent the last few years getting punished for weak retention, noisy unit economics, or overreliance on consumer acquisition. Elevate’s pitch is different: partner institutions already have physical campuses and degree authority, while the startup tries to improve the academic and career layer around them. That hybrid model is harder to build. If it works, it can be more durable than selling short-term courses online.
How big is the India higher education market?
The market behind this is huge. India’s higher education segment was valued at ₹5,75,000 crore, or about $68.06 billion, in 2024, and is projected to reach ₹11,60,000 crore, or about $134.84 billion, by 2033, growing at an 8.1% CAGR. That’s the kind of market size that makes institutional models worth building, even when execution is messy.
Demand isn’t the issue. Quality and employability are. India’s total higher education enrolment reached about 4.33 crore students in 2021-22, up from 4.14 crore a year earlier and 3.42 crore in 2014-15. Meanwhile, the broader education market is expanding fast, and policy pressure from NEP 2020 keeps pushing institutions toward vocational, skills-led, and industry-aligned formats.
That’s why this category still has life in it, even after the consumer edtech hangover. Colleges need help modernising. Students want degrees that actually convert into jobs. Investors are more interested now in businesses that plug into formal education rather than trying to replace it.
Final take on Elevate Education funding
The clean read on Elevate Education funding is this: WestBridge is backing a hybrid higher education model that tries to make colleges more employability-driven instead of blowing them up.
It’s a smarter bet than it sounds. The next thing to watch isn’t just campus expansion or AI features. It’s whether Elevate can move from 25,000 students today to 60,000 by FY29 without letting outcomes get soft.
Read how Paradigm raised a $1.2B venture fund to back founders building AI, crypto, robotics, and frontier technologies with hands-on technical support beyond traditional venture capital.
FAQ
- What happened in the latest Elevate Education funding round?
Elevate Education raised ₹170 crore, or about $17.7 million, in a Series D round led by WestBridge Capital on July 8, 2026. The company plans to use the money to build out technology and AI capabilities, add more partner institutions, and improve student outcomes. - How does Elevate Education work for students?
It works through partner colleges and universities rather than replacing them. Students enrol in accredited UG or PG programmes, while Elevate adds industry-aligned curriculum inputs, live projects, mentorship, placement prep, and career support across the learning journey. - What is the background of Elevate Education’s founders?
The founders are Ashish Munjal, Piyush Nangru, and Ankur Jain, and they launched the company as Sunstone in 2019. Munjal previously co-founded Crownit and worked at Bank of America and Knowlarity, Nangru was also an early Crownit operator, and Jain worked across Amazon, Airtel, and YourStory before joining the buildout. - Why is Elevate Education part of the higher education and edtech market?
Because it sits between colleges, students, and employers, using technology to improve how degree programmes translate into job outcomes. That puts it in a large and still-growing category: India’s higher education market was valued at ₹5,75,000 crore in 2024 and is projected to nearly double by 2033.
