Venture Catalysts makes partial exit in metaverse skill tech Cusmat with over 4.2 times returns

Venture Catalysts on Friday announced that it made a partial exit from its portfolio Cusmat Technologies (Cusmat), an immersive skilling platform that large enterprises use to upskill their industrial workforce, with over 4.2 times returns in less than three years, resulting in more than 60% extended internal rate of return.

Venture Catalysts had first invested in Cusmat’s seed round in 2020 and took an exit in the $3.5 million Series A round that the startup raised from Arkam Ventures, Unitus, Better Capital, We Founder Circle, 9Unicorns, and MapMyIndia amongst others.

“We have been invested in Cusmat since its seed round way back when the term Metaverse was not even coined or was popular. We believed in the concept and continued to back them through their Series A round. The company has posted some impressive growth metrics in the last two years,” said Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, founder and managing director at Venture Catalysts. “The move has also brought a lot of optimism in the ecosystem, especially during a challenging economic environment for raising primary rounds.”

According to a report by the World Economic Forum and PWC, poor skills cost the global economy $6.5 trillion, out of which $570 billion is attributed to India alone. Cusmat’s experience with large industrial brands in India and in a couple of leading South Asian markets has shown that the ‘skilled via the Metaverse’ workforce is 30% more productive, 25% more efficient, and 70% safer than their peers. Furthermore, the retention rate for those ‘skilled on the metaverse’ is very high, hovering at 70% on an average.

“The metaverse is the ideal environment to develop muscle memory and heightened retention needed for the optimum performance in real-world industrial activities. The great feedback from large enterprises across multiple sectors in India and South Asia has convinced us of the product market fit for our skilling metaverse platform,” Abhinav Ayan, Co-Founder and CEO, Cusmat said. “Our goal has consistently remained to positively impact the topline and bottomline of enterprises by improving the skill level of their operators & technicians.”

Since 2020, Cusmat’s platform has been leveraged by several large enterprises to upskill their industrial workforce in order to improve productivity and safety standards while reducing costs – their clientele includes companies such as Procter & Gamble, ABB, Vedanta, Tata Steel Mining, DHL, DTDC, Dr. Reddy’s, Voltas, Schneider Electric, Toshiba Mitsubishi, Volvo, Sandvik, Ultratech among others. Besides India, Cusmat is already expanding operations in other countries in the APAC and MEA regions.

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