National: Early-stage technology fund, Silverneedle Ventures announces its investment in a Chennai and Mumbai-headquartered, Enterprise skilling platform, Disprz, that helps global companies right-skill their workforce with an AI-powered learning and skilling suite. The startup has raised an undisclosed sum in a bridge round between Series B & Series C rounds from Silverneedle Ventures & other current investors. Disprz aims to utilize the fund for the company’s expansion in the US & UK markets by pushing the pedal on hiring & marketing.
Founded in 2015, Disprz is leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, cloud, and mobile, to help organisations build a steady pipeline of the fully enabled workforce by accelerating job readiness, enabling skilling on the job, and facilitating career mobility. In the year 2021, Disprz raised $13 Mn in Series B round from Dallas Venture Capital (DVC), Mars Growth Capital & others. Silverneedle Ventures (earlier Xseed Partners) has been one of the early backers of Disprz since 2016.
The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has thrown global learning and development spending into high gear – from spending that stood at $360 billion in 2019, to what is now expected to touch $500 billion in 2025.
With 280+ team members across India, USA, UK, ME & SE Asia, Disprz will use this investment in expanding to the developed markets. The startup aims to also expand the team in the sales & marketing functions in emerging markets where sales repeatability has been established.
On the investment, Mr Ajay Jain, Founder & Managing Partner of Silverneedle Ventures said, “Disprz has a strong and credible team, backed by a solid founding team- amazing team players with a great mix of business & technology mindset. With regards to space in general, given the rapid technical & process changes at the workplace, upskilling has become a huge space. The problem statement is real and universal, hence on the consumer side there is a great propensity to pay. Developed and emerging markets are at different stages in the lifecycle with emerging markets having several segments waiting to be captured. Disprz recognizes this and is already on track to make headway in these markets. The team had previously created a product for the education sector – K12+university & did a healthy exit for the same. Now they have come up with an improved product that is laced with smartness to ensure the learner is comfortable during the course. We have built a strong relationship with the founder over a period of 10 years and worked extensively along with him throughout the journey. We were one of the early backers of Disprz through Xseed, and we feel there is a strong journey ahead. The company has just scratched the surface, hence we are doubling down from SNV with a lot more conviction”
Mr Subramanian Viswanathan, Co-Founder & CEO of, Disprz on the fundraise said, “We are fast growing to become the leading provider of learning, skilling and enablement solutions for enterprises in emerging Asia, having reached a significant scale in India, South East Asia and Middle East. Enterprises in these markets are at different levels of digital learning readiness and we have a solution for each, be it a cloud-based learning management system or a sophisticated skills-based learning experience platform. ”
“We have the privilege of serving some of the household brands in India and other emerging Asian markets like Uber, HDFC Life, Sharaf DG, Central Bank of UAE, and Bajaj Allianz, to name a few among our 275 clients. We are now keen to up our game in developed markets where we have demonstrated very good initial traction.”, Mr Kuljit Chadha, Co-Founder & COO, Disprz.
The startup was founded by Subramanian Viswanathan & Kuljit Chadha. Till date, the startup has helped 275+ global organizations in redefining their digital skills and has crossed 2 Million users on 6 continents at present.
