Edtech Firm UpGrad Raises $210M In The Latest Funding Round

UpGrad, the largest Edtech unicorn company in India, has raised $210 million in a new fundraising round from notable investors. Although the company made no official comments regarding the valuation, it is believed that the round valued the company at $2.25 billion.

Along with current backers Temasek, IFC, and IIFL, the funding was driven by ETS Global, Bodhi Tree, Singapore's Kaizen Management Advisors, Family Office of Bharti Airtel, Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office, and Lakshmi Mittal's Artisan Investments. The Founder Group contributed an additional $12.5 million to this round in order to keep a majority stake in the edtech business.

UpGrad, which was founded in 2015 by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, and Phalgun Kompalli, offers a variety of services, including campus courses at 250 universities, test preparation, study abroad, and undergrad degrees. Its services cover business, law, finance, and software.

"Higher education technology will grow during the next four to five decades. With career options for college students and working professionals from the ages of 18 to 58, upGrad has transformed itself over the past 12 months to become the most integrated firm in this industry. In the years to come, upGrad will be a partner in millions of people's lifelong learning. We have always grown 100% year over year while being highly capital efficient, and we want to maintain that discipline, said Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar, co-founders of upGrad, commented on the fundraising in a joint statement.

In the following three months, upGrad plans to increase its workforce size from the current 4,800 to 7,600. In addition, there will be around 5,000 contracted coaches and mentors, 1,600 teachers, and about 170 full-time faculty members. This announcement coincides with a period of significant layoffs at edtech businesses including BYJU's-owned WhiteHat Jr, Unacademy, Vedantu, Lido Learning, and others in recent months, suggesting that the sector has lost its zeal following the epidemic high.

UpGrad acquired WOLVES, a Bengaluru-based staffing and recruitment company, and Harappa Education, a New Delhi-based provider of online education, last month. Five other offline experience centres were also opened by the startup in Delhi, Jabalpur, Kolhapur, Kottayam, and Patna.

According to an official statement from the firm, upGrad is also on track to generate annual gross revenues of $400-500 million in FY23, of which roughly 45 per cent will come from its own-branded online courses and programmes. The startup has more than three million learners spread over 100 countries, more than 300 university partners, and a strong corporate business with a client of 1,000 companies globally.