Vinod Dham makes a comeback, to start an online technology education startup Acadgild

BENGALURU: Vinod Dham, called Father of the Pentium chip, is returning as an entrepreneur after 15 years. The inventor and venture capitalist will be the chief executive of online technology education startup Acadgild, which he has co-founded along with India's storied entrepreneur duo Krishnan Ganesh and Meena Ganesh.

Acadgild's internet-based platform aims to teach just about anybody , including a class 10 student, software programming that is relevant to today's rapidly evolving digital world. Globally about 50 billion devices ­ from cars to consumer electronics ­ will be connected by the end of the current decade.

The just-launched startup will initially focus on educating the world's biggest software development market, the United States, which surprisingly is said to have a shortfall of 2.5 million `industry-ready' software professionals.

“Our aim is to provide millions of high school graduates, college graduates and working professionals, jobready skills. Our courses takes into account what today's technology giants like Google, Facebook or Twitter need,“ Dham told TOI. Acadgild's business premise using the internet to connect instructors in India with potential students around the world is similar to the Ganeshs' successful education venture TutorVista, which was sold to Pearson for $213 million two years ago.

Interestingly , the no-compete agreement between the Ganeshs' and Pearson ends this February . “That's not important because Acadgild is a new-age business model.While some elements of the business model are similar, it's not the same target audience or target market,“ K Ganesh explained.

Dham's last entrepreneurial role as chief executive was with Silicon Spice, a VOIP chip startup, which he founded in the late '90s and sold to Broadcomm for $1.2 billion. Dham left Intel, where he headed the hugely successful Pentium project in 1995, to turn entrepreneur. He was part of a boutique chip maker NextGen, acquired by AMD for $837 million.

Last decade saw Dham supporting Indian entrepreneurship through his fund Indo US Venture Partners, which he says will continue to be a priority.

It is estimated that US is reeling under education debts worth a trillion dollars, with higher education only getting expensive and out of reach for many middle-class Americans. Over the last 30 years, college tuition fees in the US has shot up by 1,000%, while the inflation index over the same period has risen by just 240%.

“About 61% of business decision-makers give colleges and universities a “C“ or lower grade when it comes to preparing students for jobs in spite of the fact that so much money and time is spent on preparing students for a college degree ­ instead of careers,“ Dham said.

Acadgild's three-monthlong software courses will cost US students $725 (Rs 45,000) per course, and will see personalized mentoring to the extent of one student to one mentor. The mentor to student ratio could at best be 1:3.

“We are leveraging India's awesome software talent to mentor our students. We are initially focused on the US and India and will later expand to large English speaking markets like Australia, UK and Canada. China, which is making big strides in learning English, is also a potentially huge market,“ Dham explained.

Ganesh said Acadgild is the culmination of the software explosion that has taken place over the last two years, which has seen it become omnipresent. “There is immense opportunity to teach millions of people hands-on software development. GPS positing and developing an app for hyper local commerce is not taught at IIT and Stanford,“ Ganesh added.

Over the next 12 months, Acadgild will roll out software courses for mobile development for Android, web development, mobile development for iOS, big data, analytics, business intelligence, cloud and cyber security .