byteXL, a Hyderabad-based edtech company that sells IT and artificial intelligence skilling programmes to engineering colleges, has raised $9 million in a round led by Elevar Equity, according to a company press release dated 7 October 2026. Existing investors Kalaari Capital and The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation also took part. LoEstro Advisors acted as financial adviser. The release is headlined “byteXL Raises $9 Million in Latest Funding Round Led by Elevar Equity”.
The release does not give a valuation, revenue figures or a name for the round. It follows a $5.9 million Series A in July 2024, which was also led by Kalaari Capital with participation from the Dell Foundation. Inc42 put the new round at about Rs 86.7 crore.
byteXL raises $9 million on a college-first model
The company’s own website describes it as “an academic-integrated skilling platform for engineering colleges”. What it sells is a suite of software rather than a single course: a learning management system, a project-building platform called Nimbus, virtual laboratories, a level-by-level coding tool, an English communication practice tool, and tools for running hackathons and for employers to hire graduates. It also lists career programmes branded bCAP and CareerXL. In other words, byteXL raises $9 million to sell software and programmes to colleges, not courses to individual students.
The homepage, as viewed by TED on 29 October 2026, does not list partner colleges, though student testimonials on it name Parul University, Malla Reddy University and Vignan University in Guntur. The company is based at the iLabs building in Madhapur, Hyderabad.
What the money is for
byteXL works directly with engineering colleges, mainly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, and integrates IT and AI skilling into the regular curriculum rather than selling separate courses to students. The company was founded in 2019 by brothers Karun and Sricharan Tadepalli, according to Inc42.
The company says it currently works with 40 institutions and reaches about 2 lakh (200,000) students. It aims to grow to 120 institutions and 5 lakh (500,000) students across 15 states over the next two years. The release says the money will go on AI-enabled learning and assessment, student analytics and larger partnership teams. Business Standard, citing the company, also listed market expansion and new industry-aligned skilling programmes.
The release also makes claims about graduate placements in 2025. TED has not reported the figure because it is a company statement that has not been independently verified.
This fundraise is a strong validation of the growth we have built at byteXL.
Karun Tadepalli, Co-Founder and CEO, byteXL
From 26 colleges to 40
Kalaari Capital set out its reasons for backing the company in an undated post on its website. At that point, it said, byteXL had partnered more than 26 colleges and universities, had trained more than a lakh students in software technologies and planned to expand its reach sevenfold over three years. Kalaari put the market at more than 4,300 engineering colleges and 1,200 universities in India, with about 1.1 million computer science students enrolling each year.
Set against the new release, those figures show the business roughly doubling its student reach since Kalaari wrote, from more than one lakh to about two lakh, while partner institutions rose from more than 26 to 40. The new two-year target of five lakh students would be about five times the student number in Kalaari’s post, by TED’s arithmetic, so byteXL raises $9 million with most of the sevenfold growth Kalaari described still to come. Kalaari described Karun Tadepalli as a former head of engineering at Accenture in the US and Sricharan Tadepalli as a former director of engineering at Oracle and Kloud9.
Who is backing it
Elevar Equity, the new lead investor, was represented in the release by Sandeep Farias, its founder and managing partner. Sampath P, a partner at Kalaari Capital, said in the release that byteXL’s differentiation lay in its model and its proprietary technology platform. Gaurav Jain, head of university success for India at The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, was also quoted.
The return of both earlier backers means the company has kept its existing investors while adding a new lead. The release does not say how much each investor contributed, what stake the new money buys or whether any existing shares changed hands.
What Elevar Equity and the Dell Foundation look for
Elevar describes itself on its website as investing early growth capital in entrepreneurs building “at the intersection of inclusivity, affordability and massive scale”, and says it has backed more than 50 companies across India and Latin America over a 20-year journey. It lists byteXL as a 2026 investment and frames the case around engineering graduates in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns whose degrees often do not lead to relevant jobs. In Elevar’s account, byteXL closes that gap by “embedding itself inside the degree”, rebuilding curricula with colleges and tracking students through to placement.
The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, which has backed byteXL since the Series A, lists the company as a featured partner under a “Building Career-Ready Skills” heading on its university success page. The foundation says that programme aims to help more than 350,000 students a year earn university degrees, with an emphasis on technical skills, communication and credentials for in-demand careers. Its page does not say how much it has put into byteXL.
What it means
TED analysis:
- For engineering colleges: byteXL’s model places skilling inside the credit-bearing curriculum, so the buyer is the college rather than the student. Private colleges outside the metros that are weighing such contracts should ask how outcomes are measured, who sets the assessments and who owns the student data.
- For investors: the targets imply average reach falling from about 5,000 students per partner institution today to roughly 4,200 at 120 institutions. That points to growth among smaller colleges, where contract values may be lower and sales cycles longer.
- For competing suppliers: a fresh round with a new lead gives byteXL money to bid for college partnerships across 15 states. Other providers of curriculum-integrated skilling should expect more competition for the same principals and management boards.
- What is missing: with no valuation, revenue or margin disclosed, the round says little about whether business-to-college skilling makes money at this scale. A future filing or annual return would be the first hard evidence.
