San Francisco-based edtech startup HiCounselor has raised $1.8 million in the pre-seed financing round, led by Silicon Valley-based Heroic Ventures.

The funding round saw participation from Tread’s CEO Dinesh Godara, and two angel groups, SuperMorpheus, and GoldenNivesh.

Founded in 2020 by Aditya Sharma and Rani Haroune, HiCounselor is an edtech platform that helps students with upskilling and job networking to become skilled software developers, data scientists, and product managers and get into a tech career in top companies and startups in the US. HiCounselor program consists of a 4-6 weeks long cohort-based course followed by networking and referrals using their AI-powered networking tool.

“The tech industry is evolving faster than ever before. But the education in universities is still outdated and does not equip students with the required skills to get a job at top tech companies. That’s why more than 50{43b59f68b3c5395fbbd8a4c1328e0d747fdf002260c295c762184cde857cf20a} of graduates remain unemployed or underemployed. On the other side, employers are desperately looking to hire skilled resources, but they struggle to find the right talent. We aim to bridge this massive gap through our personalized learning platform and AI-powered job search and networking tool,” said Aditya Sharma, Co-founder, and CEO, HiCounselor.

During six weeks of the training program, students learn technical skills via 100+ hours of coding during the training program, more than 50 hours of soft skills training, live projects, assessments, and 1:1 mentorship oversight – designed by reverse engineering industry requirements and taught by industry professionals. Then, HiCounselor finds interview opportunities for candidates using their strong network of partner companies and their unique AI-powered job search automation tool. This tool automatically identifies new jobs every day and connects them with the hiring manager and recruiters. This tool allows job seekers to cut the 30+ hours per week of manual job-searching and networking efforts down to just a few minutes.

There is no upfront payment to attend the HiCounselor program. Instead, students pay HiCounselor 9{43b59f68b3c5395fbbd8a4c1328e0d747fdf002260c295c762184cde857cf20a} of their first year’s salary in monthly installments only after landing a job.

Prior to co-founding HiCounselor, Aditya Sharma and Rani Haroune used to work as a Technology Consultant at Deloitte and Kronos in the US. They identified this gap in the recruitment process during their job, which made them leave their full-time job in 2019 and plunge into entrepreneurship.

Website: www.hicounselor.com