NxtWave: Building India’s Industry-Ready Workforce
In November 2020, three young engineers with degrees from IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur and IIIT Hyderabad set out to fix a problem India had been fighting for years: talented students across India were graduating with degrees, but without the practical skills the tech industry needed. Rahul Attuluri, Sashank Reddy Gujjula and Anupam Pedarla founded NxtWave on a simple belief: that anyone, regardless of educational background or city, should be able to build a career in technology. Six years on, that belief has grown into one of India’s fastest-growing ed-tech companies, with learners from all 28 states and 6 union territories, over 650 districts and has helped students get placed in more than 2,500 companies.
NxtWave’s first product, Intensive, launched within months of the company’s founding, as a job-oriented upskilling program for people who wanted to build a software career even without a traditional computer science background. By March 2021, the first batch had already produced placement outcomes, and by September that year, NxtWave had paying learners in over 250 districts across the country. That early traction led to the company’s first institutional funding, a $2.8 million pre-Series A round led by Orios Ventures and Better Capital in December 2021.
In May 2021, NxtWave introduced its second offering, CCBP 4.0 Academy, aimed at students already enrolled in college. The Academy lets students build in-demand tech skills alongside their existing degree with a commitment of just six to seven hours a week, using the same practical, project-based approach that has become NxtWave’s hallmark. The company builds its teaching around real-time feedback, gamified progress tracking and AI-driven personalisation, delivered in vernacular languages so students from smaller towns can understand and retain the content better.
The company’s growth accelerated through 2022 and 2023. It partnered with the National Skill Development Corporation, under India’s Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, in June 2022, and won the Best Tech Skilling EdTech Company of the Year award at the Times Business Awards that September. By November 2022, over a thousand companies had hired NxtWave’s learners. In February 2023, it raised $33 million in a Series C round led by Greater Pacific Capital, with continued participation from Orios Ventures and Better Capital, closed a funding winter that had put most ed-tech startups on the back foot.
NxtWave has since added government partnerships around specific skilling goals, including a September 2024 MoU with the Government of Telangana, signed in the presence of the state’s Chief Minister and IT Minister, to upskill Telangana’s youth in Artificial Intelligence.
The most significant expansion of NxtWave’s offerings came in November 2023, with the launch of NIAT, or NxtWave of Innovation in Advanced Technologies. NIAT is an upskilling initiative built to bridge the gap between industry and academia. It is an industry-aligned upskilling program offered at more than 30 collaborating institutions across India. The program is built around real-world projects, hackathons, masterclasses from industry professionals and exposure to emerging technologies. Learners join through the NxtWave Assessment Test, which evaluates aptitude, logical reasoning and problem-solving ability, and those who complete the journey receive an Industry Ready Certificate from NIAT.
Within just 3 years, NIATians have launched over 100 startups, generated more than ₹2 crore in revenue by solving real business problems, built over 2,080 AI-powered projects, and earned more than ₹2.92 crore in internship stipends. Individual stories stand out too: NIATian Sonika Chowdary was selected for Google Summer of Code 2026, Sanjay Rahul Mogilipuri got selected as a delegate at the Harvard HPAIR Asia Conference, and a student team built NeuroNexas AI, exploring how artificial intelligence could read the brain waves of coma patients and help them communicate.
NxtWave’s founders have earned extraordinary recognitions. **Anupam Pedarla and Sashank Reddy Gujjula were named in the Forbes India 30 Under 30 list in 2024. Rahul Attuluri was named among India’s Top 250 Nxt-Gen Entrepreneurs by Hurun India the same year. In June 2025, Attuluri spoke at the WEF’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, China, on how agentic AI is reshaping entry-level jobs, and in January 2026, he was invited to the WEF’s main Annual Meeting in Davos, engaging policymakers and business leaders on India’s role in the global AI-skilling effort.
NIAT has also become an onboarded partner of the IIT Kharagpur Outreach Course Network. Through this network, NIAT learners can access select IIT Kharagpur OCN micro-specialisation courses, including Foundations of Generative AI and Generative and Agentic AI. Those who complete these courses earn an IIT Kharagpur OCN Micro-Specialisation Certificate, an OCN Student Identity Card and email ID, and become eligible for OCN Alumni Status, all subject to IIT Kharagpur’s own policies.
The company itself has been recognised at the highest levels. In 2024, the World Economic Forum named NxtWave a Technology Pioneer, a distinction awarded to only 100 organisations worldwide that year, alongside past honourees such as Google and Spotify. Deloitte listed NxtWave among India’s fastest-growing technology companies in its Technology Fast 50 rankings, and the company partnered with OpenAI Academy to launch India’s largest generative AI student challenge in 2025.
From a three-founder idea in 2020 to a company reshaping how India’s youth prepare for technology careers, NxtWave’s journey reflects a simple conviction: that skill, not pedigree, should determine opportunity. With Intensive, Academy and NIAT now serving learners at every stage of their educational journey, and government bodies, collaborations with institutions and global technology firms lining up to work with it, NxtWave’s next chapter looks built on the same foundation as its first: practical, industry-aligned learning, delivered at scale.
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