Indian EdTech giant, UpGrad made an announcement few days ago that it has completed the acquisition of Harappa Education. Harappa Education, which was launched in 2018 by Raj Sinha and Shreyasi Singh, is an online education platform that helps individuals to upskill themselves in the areas of their profession.
According to news reports, Harappa Education was acquired by UpGrad for 300 crore Indian rupees. With the acquisition of Harappa education, UpGrad plans to enter into the field of upskilling and re-skilling workers and employees in multinational corporations and similar business entities.
UpGrad which was established in 2015 by Ronnie Screwvala, Phalgun Kompalli, and Mayank Kumar, is currently one of the leading Edtech companies in the country.
As of now, the company offers short and long-duration courses from various universities around the world. Data science, MBA machine learning, software development, finance, and law are a few areas of education in which UpGrad is currently offering courses.
With the acquisition of Harappa Education, UpGrad also plans to achieve growth in its revenue by nearly 65% in the upcoming fiscal. In monetary terms, the company is eyeing a revenue of 4000 crore Indian rupees.
Mayank Kumar, who is managing director of the company, said that UpGrad is expecting to add nearly 1 million students in the current financial year. Such an increase in the number of students would help the ed-tech company to touch the milestone of 40 lakh students.
“We see strong demand from our clients and with Harappa coming in, we believe we’ll be able to grow fast within the segment as we cross-leverage the synergies,” said Ronnie Screwvala, founding chairman and major shareholder of upGrad, said.
Raj Sinha, who is cofounder of Harappa Education, said in an official statement that the company earned nearly 75 crores in revenue. This was triple the amount the company achieved as revenue the year before. With an increasing demand from large business entities in the corporate world to re-skill their employees, the revenue is expected to reach 250 crores in the upcoming fiscal.
UpGrad which is currently valued at 1.2 billion dollars, is funded by 7 investors which include Washington-based International Finance Corporation and Signapore-based Temasek Holdings. UpGrad raised nearly 426 million dollars from various investment giants across 5 investment rounds. The latest round of investment was on 15th June 2022 when the company raised 225 million dollars from Lupa Systems and Educational Testing Services.
It is also important to note that the latest acquisition of Harappa Education by UpGrad is the 3rd acquisition this year by the unicorn company. On 2nd May, UpGrad bought an entire stake in Hyderabad-based INSOFE for 33 million dollars.
