Just three months after raising funds, Invact Metaversity, referred to as a “metaverse” university, is exploring options that include cutting the burn rate, pivoting to another idea, letting one of the founders take full charge, or returning the excess capital to investors, as its founders stand at crossroads regarding their vision for the edtech company.
Founded by former Twitter India head Manish Maheshwari and former Microsoft engineer Tanay Pratap in December, Invact canceled its first course, which was supposed to go live on May 12 with a cohort of 60 students. It refunded the amount with interest to the students who had enrolled for the course.
“As we started testing the early version of the Metaversity platform with students, it became apparent to us that the immersive classroom and the community experience were not getting delivered at a level that we had envisaged,” Maheshwari tweeted on Monday.
“As we progressed, the differences also emerged between the founding team on the vision (are we an education company or a metaverse company?) and the approach to achieving that vision.”
Maheshwari’s tweets are in sharp contrast to the positive public messaging on Invact’s official Twitter handle.
This comes after Pratap e-mailed a letter to the investors citing that both the co-founders had “irreconcilable differences”.
Additionally, the startup was also looking for potential buyers earlier this month but could not find one on the terms and conditions, the letter highlighted.
Invact, which offered a four-month “metaMBA” in a virtual reality environment meant to replicate classrooms, libraries, playgrounds, cafeterias and even hallways, raised about $5 million from venture capital funds including Antler India and Arkam Ventures, as well from individual investors such as Kishore Biyani and Mohandas Pai.