An investment banker by profession, Nikhil Barshikar chose to step away from a corporate career in finance and founded Imarticus Learning (estb.2012), a focused skilling initiative, to bridge the gap between academic theory and real industry application.

Founded on the simple premise ‘Education should lead to real careers, not just certificates’, the Mumbai-based edtech platform has since impacted over a million learners and 40+ programmes across finance, analytics, AI, cybersecurity, technology, marketing, and management domains. In 2025, he launched Imarticus School of Finance & Business to deepen applied finance education and is preparing to tap the capital markets to fund its expansion plans.

Speaking to Dipta Joshi from EducationWorld, Nikhil Barshikar, founder-CEO, Imarticus Learning, explains the overarching impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in the edtech sector and the need for continuous learning in sustaining and growing a career.

1. What is driving the demand for career-focused, job-oriented education rather than traditional degree-centric education?  

The numbers tell the story plainly. India had 63 million graduates aged 20 to 29 in 2023, and nearly 11 million of them were unemployed. That is not a talent problem; that is a curriculum problem. Degrees were built for a world that no longer exists.

What we are seeing is a structural realignment, not a trend. Industries in finance, analytics, and technology are evolving faster than any university syllabus can keep pace with. By the time a four-year curriculum is approved, reviewed, and delivered, the skills it was designed for have already shifted. Employers are not hiring degrees anymore; they are hiring demonstrable capability, adaptability, and real-world readiness.

What makes this moment different is who is driving the shift. It is not just fresh graduates looking for their first job. It is mid-career professionals realising that the credentials that got them in the door will not take them to the next floor. The idea of learning once and applying forever is finished. Continuous upskilling is now simply part of having a career.

2. What differentiates Imarticus’ model from other edtech providers offering upskilling options?

The most important design decision we made early on was to build every programme backward from the job role, not forward from a syllabus. We start with the employer: What does a credit analyst at a leading bank actually do? What does a data scientist at a fintech firm need to solve? The curriculum follows from there.

We now offer 40+ programmes across finance, analytics, AI, cybersecurity, technology, marketing, and management. Every one of them is co-created with industry partners. We collaborate with institutions including IIMs, IITs, ISB, XLRI, London Business School, Oxford, PwC, and KPMG.

3. How do you ensure that your courses remain closely aligned with industry needs?

We think of ourselves as an education partner for life. We have built this with 3,500+ hiring partners globally. We have upskilled over 10,00,000 mid-to-senior professionals through corporate trainings, e-learning solutions, executive education programmes delivered with IIMs, IITs, ISB, alongside organisations like PwC Academy, IBM, and KPMG in India.

Our industry partners are not just lending their name to the brochure. They are contributing to the curriculum framework, bringing in case studies drawn from real scenarios, and often delivering sessions or mentoring directly.

And the outcomes are measurable. We placed 4,400+ learners in the past year alone, averaging one placement every hour. It is the clearest signal that what we teach is what the market actually wants.

4. Why is Imarticus planning a initial public offering (IPO) of ₹1,000 crore in 2027? What strategic benefits are you expecting? 

What an IPO enables is significant. First, it provides the capital to accelerate at the pace this opportunity demands. The professional education market in India is still in its early chapters. There are learners across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities who deserve the same quality of career education that metros have had access to and that reach requires investment in infrastructure, technology, and talent that a public listing would support.

Second, it enables us to pursue acquisitions with greater conviction and speed. We have already made five acquisitions — Eckovation, StratOnboard, Hero Mind Mine, MyCaptain, and we have more in the pipeline, both in India and internationally. The ability to move decisively on the right opportunities is something a public company is better positioned to do.

5. What have been Imarticus’ biggest challenges in scaling the platform? 

The temptation is to grow headcount, expand centres, launch new programmes, and call it scale. The reality is that none of that matters if placement rates drop and learner outcomes suffer. That is how credibility erodes, quickly and quietly.

The hardest challenge is maintaining consistency as you grow. Every learner who joins a cohort in Ahmedabad should have the same quality of education and the same intensity of placement support as someone in Mumbai. That requires rigorous standardisation of faculty quality, content delivery, and learner assessment, continuously.

The second challenge is cohort management. Strong placement outcomes are not just about teaching well. They require careful matching of learner profiles to roles, sustained employer relationships, and the ability to read hiring cycles before they shift. We manage this through deep employer engagement and real-time market intelligence.

We also see the diversity of learner backgrounds as something we have to take seriously. A working professional transitioning from a mid-level banking role needs a very different intervention than a fresh graduate with a commerce degree. Personalised learning pathways matter but they cannot be allowed to compromise programme rigour.

6. As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms industries, do you perceive a shift in the skills being taught, or the delivery of education itself?

It is changing both simultaneously, and the honest answer is that most education institutions are only grappling with one of those at a time.

On the skills side, the nature of work is shifting faster than most curricula can absorb. Analytical thinking, AI literacy, and the ability to work alongside intelligent systems are becoming baseline competencies. We have embedded AI across our programme curriculum precisely because we think the employer of 2027 will assume these skills, not reward them.

On the delivery side, AI gives us capabilities that fundamentally change what personalised education can look like. We use AI-enabled learner progress tracking, advanced LMS platforms, virtual labs, and data analytics to improve outcomes at the individual level. We can identify where a learner is falling behind before they know it themselves.

However I want to be clear: AI is an enabler, not a replacement for the human dimensions of education. Mentorship, peer learning, employer relationships, and the confidence that comes from being genuinely job-ready, none of that gets automated. The best education institutions in the next decade will be the ones that use AI to amplify those human elements, not substitute them.

The acceleration of change also reinforces a core belief since we started: you cannot learn once and coast. The professionals who will thrive are the ones who treat learning as continuous. That is what we have always been built for.