Ronnie Screwvala's upGrad acquires rival Talentedge for nearly Rs.400 crore
upGrad,Leading online higher education company announced it has acquired Gurugram-based edtech rival Talentedge. According to sources, the acquisition is valued somewhere between Rs 350-Rs 400 crore.
Talentedge is currently the fourth largest online higher education company is expected to reach a revenue of over Rs 130 crore this year, and also aims to double its revenue.
"Talentedge has meticulously built a strong business over the last decade and stayed the course in this space where most did not survive and we are very pleased to welcome them at upGrad as we build one of the largest EdTech companies in the world," said Ronnie Screwvala, Chairperson and Co-Founder, upGrad.
Talentedge offers more than 60 courses in collaboration with more than 20 universities. It has partnered top Indian and international institutes including IIMs, XLRI, MICA, eCornell and UCLA extension, among others, and has more than 5,00,000 individual and corporate learners.
"Talentedge will continue to work as is with its university and institute partners to deliver the quality education to its learners across degree and certification programmes," said Aditya Malik, CEO and MD, Talentedge.
upGrad has come into a consensus to acquire Arrina Education Services, the holding company of Talentedge Education Ventures, and it will be one of the larger mergerin the Indian higher education space.
“We are leaders by far in the higher education space in India,” Screwvala, chairperson of upGrad, told. He added that upGrad has fixed its leadership position as the most integrated player in higher education in Asia, serving learners and working professionals across the age group of 18-50 years.
upGrad cofounded by Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli in 2015, has recently turned a unicorn, hitting a valuation of $1.2 billion with a $185 million funding round in August.
Screwvala said the company is not actively looking for any more fundraising, though there is a “lot of incoming demand”. “At some stage, we might service that also.We have just raised money, so we don’t have to raise more."
UpGrad has grown drastically on the back of inorganic expansions in the last one year, having acquired The GATE Academy (November, 2020), Rekrut India (December, 2020), KnowledgeHut (August, 2021), Impartus (May, 2021), and Global Study Partners (GSP), the largest study abroad company in Australia (November, 2021).
Also, in the last month, upGrad merged upGrad Campus (originally Impartus), upGrad Jeet (The Gate Academy), and upGrad KnowledgeHut to consolidate and create one parent company.