As we as a society continue to play catch-up with the ever-evolving nature of technology in the workplace, continued education and up-skilling has become an integral aspect of the global workforce.
GoodGist Inc., a Foster City, California startup that launched last August, is trying to address the critical need for continuous up-skilling and re-skilling in today’s fast-paced business environment.
On Monday, the company announced that it secured $1 million in funding from several investors to help continue its mission and expand.
The investment comes at a pivotal moment for GoodGist Inc., according to a recent press statement, as it prepares to launch an advanced AI Curator designed to up-skill and re-skill the workforce in the rapidly evolving corporate landscape.
“Traditionally, it costs up to $50,000 per finished hour of content for an entire multi-hour course. Remarkably, less than 30% of these courses are initiated by learners, and even fewer are completed,” said Ruban Phukan, co-founder and CEO of GoodGist Inc. “This highlights the urgent need for a paradigm shift in corporate skills development pedagogy.”
According to the World Economic Forum, an estimated 1 billion individuals globally will require up-skilling or re-skilling by 2030, with failure to meet this demand potentially resulting in an $8.5 trillion hit to the global economy.
GoodGist Inc. plans to address these key issues by deploying an advanced AI Curator, leveraging its patent-pending technology designed to personalize learning and research journeys for individuals on-demand to expedite workforce up-skilling and re-skilling.
The company was founded last year by serial entrepreneurs Ruban Phukan and Fayyaz Hussain, both of whom count several successful exits of technology startups. The team comprises industry veterans in AI, Enterprise, and Consumer technologies, LMS, and LXP platforms with experience from companies like IBM, Yahoo, Cornerstone OnDemand, Saba Software, EdCast, PayTM, Progress Software, Huawei, Toshiba, Netscout, and others.
According to the founders, their product vision was born from firsthand experience navigating up-skilling and knowledge management hurdles in startups and large corporations.
Investors that participated in GoodGist’s $1 million round include FortyTwo VC, Cedar Ridge Ventures, DX Partners, as well as prominent angel investors from leading tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
According to GoodGist, the company will use the funding to launch their multilingual GoodGist.com platform in the global markets, expand their team to bolster research and development efforts, and enhance product offerings to mitigate skill gaps and information overload effectively.
“We are fortunate to have the backing of investors who fully support our vision and mission,” said Phukan. “Together, we aim to address and avert what could soon escalate into a crisis for the corporate world if not properly addressed.”
For his part, Asutosh Upadhyay, co-founder of FortyTwo.VC, said, “The current L&D systems are designed to address the common denominator and cannot deliver the desired ROI as these models struggle to balance scalability with personalization. GoodGist Inc. aims to challenge this bottleneck. Our investment reflects our confidence in the transformative power of AI to reshape enterprise learning and development, and we could not have envisioned a more capable team to lead this endeavor.”
Another major investor in the round, Kirti Reddy, founder and Managing Partner of Cedar Ridge Ventures, concurred. “The possibilities here are immense – across the whole value chain of L&D and in many different sectors and markets. We are excited to partner with Ruban and the team to execute against this bold vision,” she added.
