Sunstone, a higher education startup that works with academic institutions to help their students improve their skills for employability, has raised $35 million in a new funding round as it seeks to spread to other Indian cities.

Sunstone’s founders said Friday that WestBridge Capital led the startup’s Series C funding round. Alteria Capital also participated in the funding, which brings its round to date to approximately $68 million.

There are thousands of colleges and management institutions in India, but apart from those that top the rankings, most are unable to attract enough students. Their programs are also generally outdated and they struggle to get their students to get jobs.

Founded in 2019, Sunstone addresses these challenges by offering students a wide range of additional courses and helping them find jobs, co-founder Piyush Nangru told TechCrunch in an interview.

“Colleges operate at 40% occupancy. This amounts to a perishable inventory for them, due to which they are unable to amass resources and hence the quality of education suffers,” he said. “We partner with these institutions to provide soft skills and development courses as well as campus life programs for students to improve the quality of their education.”

Through these partnerships, the institutes continue to offer hundreds of hours of “core” courses to students. “Take the MBA, for example. It is a 900 hour program, which covers key topics like accounting, marketing and finance. The curriculum is outdated, so we are integrating our own 600-hour modules – half of which are soft skills focussed and the rest industry ready skills – on top of that,” he explained.

Part of the value proposition of the New Delhi-based startup, which currently services undergraduate and postgraduate students at more than 40 institutions in nearly three dozen Indian cities, is bringing parity in the quality of education and employment opportunities in all establishments with which it is a partner.

“India’s higher education system is on the brink of a long overdue transformation,” said Ashish Munjal, co-founder and chief executive of Sunstone. “Sunstone is well positioned to enable this change and impact the lives of millions of students. Over the years, we have made significant progress in this direction, but we still have a long way to go, because the market opportunities and the problems that we are trying to solve are very important. »

Sunstone, which says it has grown 10-fold over the past two years, is currently focusing on business schools. It is also beginning to expand into engineering and other tech sectors and that expansion is part of how it plans to roll out the new funds, the founders said.

“Over the past year, we have seen Sunstone grow and continue to improve the quality of education provided to every student. Seeing the ever-increasing demand and its potential to be a major disruptor, we are delighted to double our investment to support its mission to transform the higher education sector in India,” said Sandeep Singhal, Managing Partner, WestBridge Capital , in a press release.

Two suspects have been arrested and charged in the fatal beating of a New York City taxi driver in Queens, according to the New York Police Department (NYPD).

Kutin Gyimah, 52, of the Bronx, was completing a five-passenger ride in a New York City yellow taxi minivan around 6:25 a.m. near Beach 54 Street and Arverne Boulevard in the Queen’s Rockaway neighborhood when passengers weren’t paid. their fare for the ride and took off.

After Gyimah chased the suspects down the street, graphic images released by the NYPD show four of the suspects surrounding the taxi driver, punching and kicking the victim while she was on the ground.

Three of the suspects were seen leaving Gyimah as he got back to his feet, but one suspect then approached the taxi driver and knocked the victim unconscious with a punch to the head.

Footage then showed the five suspects leaving the scene and entering a building.

The five suspects. (NYPD)

When authorities arrived, the victim was lying on the sidewalk with a traumatic brain injury to the back of his head, police said.

Gyimah was rushed to Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Queens by EMS, but was later pronounced dead.

Two 20-year-old male suspects from Queens were arrested and charged Thursday, authorities say. Both Austin Amos and Nikolas Porters face charges of gang assault and theft of services, while Amos faces additional charges of manslaughter and assault.

Amos, who turned himself in Wednesday night, has previous arrests for “theft, criminal mischief, criminal contempt and sexual misconduct,” according to the Daily mail.

Austin Amos, 20 (NYPD)

Police are still looking for three other wanted suspects – all believed to be teenage girls – in connection with the victim’s death.

Gyimah’s death devastated his family and the Ghanaian community in New York.

“I don’t know what to do now. I lost. I lost,” Gyimah’s wife, Abigail Barwuah, told CBS New York. “He was a good, good man. He was my backbone. I’m lost right now. My kids’ hero.

Gyimah, described as a devout Christian, leaves behind a wife and four children, aged three to eight.

A GoFundMe page has been set up for the taxi driver’s family, who received over $150,000 on Thursday night.

The New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the suspects’ arrest.

Overall, crime in Democratic-run New York City was up 38.6% from the same time last year, although murders were down 8.1%.

Rising crime has Big Apple residents worried about their safety, as a recent poll found that 76% fear becoming a victim of violent crime.

You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.

• Eurostoxx -0.6%
• DAX Germany -0.7%
• France CAC 40 -0.6%
• FTSE UK -0.3%
• IBEX Spain -0.3%

This is not a good look at stocks towards the end of the week as we see the markets starting to move now in the day. The Dollar continues to rise, with USD/JPY now up 0.5% to 136.50. The rise is supported by higher bond yields, with 10-year Treasury yields up more than 6 basis points at 2.943% for now.

Elsewhere, US futures are also down on the day with S&P 500 futures down 0.5%. The rejection earlier in the week at the 200-day moving average could be the cause for a downward extension now.

Apple this week released back-to-back updates for iOS and Safari, both numbered 15.6.1. The iOS update was released on Wednesday and the Safari update was released on Thursday, and both fix security vulnerabilities. Apple wrote that it is aware that these vulnerabilities may have been exploited, so people should update their iOS and Safari as soon as possible.

The iOS update fixes two vulnerabilities that iPhone and iPad users may encounter. One vulnerability could have allowed an application to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges, and the second vulnerability was in WebKit, the engine that powers Safari and other third-party browsers on iOS. The WebKit vulnerability can also lead to arbitrary code execution by malicious content.

The Safari update also fixes a vulnerability in WebKit, but in some older operating systems. This update is intended to fix a vulnerability that could lead to the execution of arbitrary code on Mac OS Big Sur and Mac OS Catalina.

TAIP:

Taiwan said on Friday it had not been told of a so-called ‘Chip 4’ meeting that would include it, the United States, South Korea and Japan, but added that the island had always cooperated. closely with the United States on supply chains.

South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said Seoul is expected to attend a preliminary meeting of the four major chipmakers, describing the meeting as led by the United States.

He did not specify what would be discussed.

The timing, location and other details of the meeting have yet to be decided, said a South Korean official who was not authorized to speak to media and declined to be identified.

Taiwan’s economy ministry said in a statement to Reuters on Thursday evening that it did not yet have relevant information about the meeting.

“In past exchanges and dialogues between Taiwan and the United States, the United States offered similar ideas, but there was no specific content at the time,” he added.

Taiwan is a major semiconductor producer and home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), a major supplier to Apple Inc.

He was keen to show the United States, its most important international supporter at a time of growing military tensions between Taipei and Beijing, that he is a friend and reliable supplier as a global chip crisis affects car production. and consumer electronics.

Asked about the meeting, Japan’s Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs Noriyuki Shikata said that semiconductors are a “very strategically important industry” for Japan and that “in due course there may be better cooperation between countries”.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)