KOLKATA: Ed-tech platform upGrad has acquired the leading video-enabled learning solutions provider Impartus in a bid to bolster its presence in the higher-education space – a market touted to be worth Rs 560 crores. The ed-tech firm has committed over Rs 150 crore for the buyout and to invest in its growth.
With this acquisition, upGrad, which predominantly focuses on working professionals, will now expand its presence among Higher educational institutions & learners. Given the market opportunity, it will enable upGrad to add 50,000 paid learners in the very first year of the acquisition.
Founded by three IIT-graduates, Amit Mahensaria, Alok Choudhary, and Manish Kumar, Bengaluru-based Impartus develops cutting-edge, innovative technology solutions for education, with their core feature being virtual classrooms that allow for deep learner-teacher engagement. It was also the front-runner in allowing schools and colleges to migrate online at zero cost when the pandemic broke in 2020. The platform has successfully boarded over 280 higher educational institutes, 50,000 teachers, and six lakh learners within a short span of seven years.
“One of the major challenges faced by graduates in India is their lack of industry-ready and employable skill sets due to the inadequate curriculum of HigherEd institutions. The synergy of Impartus and upGrad will pave the way for augmenting college education by helping learners upskill with new-age courses, thus elevating their candidature for better career prospects,” said upGrad Campus CEO Amit Mahensaria.
Impartus, now a 100 per cent subsidiary of upGrad, has been integrated into the ed-tech giant’s ecosystem and rebranded as ‘upGrad Campus’. In its new avatar, upGrad Campus will target HigherEd institutions and college students, with its learning tools and world-class content, in an integrated solution. It is looking to close FY22 with around Rs 85 crore revenue, with the founders continuing to run & grow the business independently.
upGrad chairman & co-founder Ronnie Screwvala said: “Our M&A strategy is focused on creating a career ecosystem and in helping build the blocks for India to emerge as the teaching capital of the world. Aligned with our vision, upGrad Campus will bolster our presence in the university education space and help the youth of Bharat learn the necessary skill set to become more employable and join the workforce as leaders of tomorrow.”
upGrad Corporate Development and M&A president Gaurav Kumar said the acquisition opens up a larger target group, as upGrad Campus will enable both HigherEd institutions and its learners to get access to the world-class learning materials. “We welcome the team to the upGrad family,” he said.
KOLKATA: The pandemic has brought live sports to a standstill across the world for a brief period. Despite the re-start of major sporting events, most tournaments continued to be played in empty stadiums.
The broadcasters relied on the use of augmented reality, virtual reality to sustain the viewer’s attention. But, the tectonic shift in the way a game is being played impacted big brands along with franchises, players, athletes, federations who depend on sports for better reach and higher recall. Many had to tweak their advertising strategies to adapt to the changing times.
Amid all this, came the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). One of the biggest sporting extravaganzas returned to the home-country after more than a year. But, as the game was beginning to catch momentum, the ferocious second wave of the pandemic compelled the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) to suspend it mid-way, leaving the advertisers in a quandary.
In India, larger spends on sports revolve around Cricket given the fandom of the game across the country. After an unusual year, the entire industry was looking forward to 2021 with big-ticket tournaments in pipeline. But with the IPL 2021 suspended indefinitely, the eyes are now on the upcoming tournaments in the sports calendar.
At this critical juncture, Indiantelevision.com is organising a virtual panel discussion to deliberate on ‘Brands and live sports in the pandemic times’ on 21 May (Friday) at 3 pm. The roundtable is part of the Television Boardroom series.
The esteemed panel includes speakers from brands and advertising agencies: Havas Media Group India CEO Mohit Joshi, DDB Mudra Group Integrated Media country head, managing partner Rajmohan Sundaram, upGrad India CEO, Arjun Mohan and Mobile Premier League (MPL) corporate development, investors relation SVP Joe Wadakethalakal. The panel discussion will be moderated by Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO & editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari.
The virtual session will begin at 3:00 pm on Friday and will be live-streamed on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
KOLKATA: The Covid-19 pandemic played spoilsport with people’s plans to seek higher education at foreign universities. With the crisis showing no signs of abating soon, would-be-students are re-evaluating their priorities or are in quandary on how to fulfil their desire to “study abroad”. To overcome this challenge, edtech platform upGrad has unveiled a Study Abroad program to enable learners to experience on-campus learning with renowned international universities.
The idea of this initiative draws back from a recent survey conducted by the e-learning leader, wherein it was found that a lot of upGrad learners and alumni are still willing to travel and study abroad, to find employment in foreign regions. Responding to such emerging demands, but also keeping affordability in mind, as not everybody in such testing times is willing to make heavier financial commitments, upGrad has designed this unique model offering.
The program is designed carefully keeping in mind the online cost for one year, which is 1/10th of the offline expenses, thus offering dual benefits of being cost-effective, with an added advantage of mobility. Learners under this arrangement have a chance to study abroad and explore job opportunities in the respective region as per their choice in the coming future, at a cost significantly lesser than what they would have to pay for a fully on-campus foreign course.
With a target to achieve 50,000 learners by 2026, upGrad has already kicked off two such programs; the first being the pathway to Australian Universities where renowned Australian universities like the James Cook University, Brisbane Campus are participating, along with the second program, Master’s Degree in Data Science wherein learners will receive dual accreditation from IIIT Bangalore and the International University of Applied Sciences, Germany.
The newly introduced program is not only applicable for learners in India, but also geographies like the Middle East, southeast Asia, etc. It will also allow them to pursue the program in two parts: one-year online in India or from their respective countries, followed by an opportunity to complete their course on-campus abroad in the subsequent year/s.
upGrad India CEO Arjun Mohan said, “We have always aimed at providing quality transnational education to our learners who are currently residing across geographies. With the Covid-situation impacting international students’ mobility dramatically, we have now come up with a sustainable solution of the ‘Study Abroad’ program, where the learner spends this year studying online and moves abroad the next year to gain their global exposure or build a career there. With this one-of-a-kind program arrangement & Ankur’s joining us, we look forward to expanding the Bachelor’s market for studying abroad by making it affordable and relevant to the current market situation.”
He added that the higher learning platform is looking to close at least 20 university tie-ups as part of the initiative in the coming months.
Both programs are in-build with personalised mentorship from upGrad to offer a continuous handholding throughout the program modules and includes an end-to-end counselling/visa support to make the entire process and learning experience hassle-free for its learners. On the successful completion of the on-campus program in the second year, learners can also apply for a post-study-work visa in the destination country and build a career there.
Kolkata: At a time when edtech platforms are booming in India, higher learning major UpGrad has raised $120 million from Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore. With this, UpGrad is speeding toward a landmark $1 billion valuation.
This is the first external funding raised by the edtech major. Since its founding six years ago in 2015, upGrad has been 100 per cent owned, funded, and run by its co-founders as a capital-efficient business.
The Mumbai-based start-up plans to use the fresh capital to further strengthen its team, scale its global market operations, bolster its technology and product capabilities, pursue M&A opportunities, expand graduate and post-graduate degree portfolio in India, and scale up operations to achieve its $2 billion revenue goal by 2026, thereby reinforcing its position as a global higher-edtech leader emerging from India.
upGrad co-founders Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli said in a joint statement, “We welcome Temasek in our mission to power career success for each and every member of the global workforce as their trusted LifeLongLearning partner and drive meaningful career outcomes. This capital will further fuel our commitment towards global expansion as well as deeper India penetration, as we march forward with our goal of making India the teaching capital of the world.”
Screwvala told Bloomberg that he expects to raise another round of capital in three to six months.
Credit Suisse acted as the exclusive financial advisor to upGrad, and Rajaram Legal acted as legal advisor.
UpGrad’s current repertoire includes over 100 courses in subjects like data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, coding, finance and law, in collaboration with universities like Michigan State University and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. About a million learners, mainly from India as well as four dozen other countries, take courses that run from six months to two years.
MUMBAI: After the success of its #DontLickAssKickAss campaign last year featuring a donkey, edtech platform upGrad has come out with another campaign which sees the animal in a fresh avatar. The second leg of the 'Sirf Naam ki Nahi, Kaam Ki Degree' campaign sees the donkey as an animated, feisty fortune-teller.
Conceptualised by The Womb, the film reminds working professionals how the right specialisation can lead to one getting salary increments, as high as 50 per cent.
Previously in 2020 the ed-tech firm, via its campaign, had offered an alternative to licking ass in order to progress in one’s career- It told one to get a specialised degree from its many offerings that would make one’s boss take notice of your skillset. In its new ad film, it takes the 'Sirf Naam Ki Nahin, Kaam Ki Degree’ messaging further, using the fortune-teller donkey. The animal predicts the person’s success and bright future after he has acquired a specialisation certificate from upGrad saying, “Specialisation hain right, toh future hoga bright (If the specialisation’s right, the future is bright).”
The Womb founding partner Navin Talreja said, “With the success of #KaamKiDegree we had to find a message that would showcase the value of upGrad specialisations to the fence sitters. Given the success of the donkey as a device we just felt what could be better than getting our donkey deliver this wisdom, albeit in its own feisty manner. Embarking on this journey with Varmdea was reassuring as he is awesome with performances. A charmingly intricate set up, brilliant animation, and the perfect soundtrack have all come together to bring this spectacularly to life."
upGrad chief executive officer Arjun Mohan said, “The campaign is a wake-up call for the youth and working professionals to invest in real value-adding, outcome-oriented education that can result in employability and career progression. We received an overwhelming response in our first leg, as the Donkey, quite literally became a talk of the town."
KOLKATA: Edtech platform UpGrad is all set to add yet another milestone to its credit by impacting additional one million plus professionals in the workforce through its b2b offering, UpGrad for Business.
Realising the importance of reskilling and the pace of digital transformation accelerated by Covid2019, companies across various sectors such as PSUs (Power Grid Corporation of India), ITeS (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), manufacturing (Welspun Group), consulting (PwC), analytics (Fractal Analytics), BFSI (HDFC Life Insurance), media (Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd) and PR (Adfactors PR) among others have chosen upGrad for Business as one of their most trusted learning and development (L&D) partner.
With industries racing towards being data-driven, organisations seek to have the twin power of data and technology to add to their competitive advantage. Data skills have turned into the single largest skill gap in organisations followed by digital technologies. In order to address these skill gaps, UpGrad for Business has aligned its programs across the critical pillars of data, technology, management and behavioural skills.
According to a report titled, The Human Impact of Data Literacy by Accenture and Qlik, despite nearly all employees (83 per cent) recognising data as an asset, few are using it for informed decision-making. While 53 per cent of employees trust their decisions more when they are based on data, four in five (80 per cent) still frequently defer to a “gut feeling” rather than data-driven insights when making decisions.
UpGrad for Business president (head) Minaxi Indra commented, "The UpGrad for Business team is customer-obsessed and takes pride in ‘hyper-contextualising’ learning for our customers. We build industry-relevant case studies based on the customer's industry and their business needs. Our focus on creating a specialist-level workforce makes us a pioneer in the online b2b learning space. We ensure our customer's workforce contributes to their organisational business outcomes by learning from our world-class university partners. UpGrad for Business enables leadership competency building and a future-forward business across entry-level and middle management employees."
PwC US Advisory director Deepesh Hiran further added, "UpGrad has a very strong brand name from an analytics perspective in the market and a very strong client portfolio. We realised that the maturity of understanding the analytics business and the maturity of the analytics content was reflecting while we were evaluating upGrad as a partner."
UpGrad for Business aims to build a lifelong learning partnership with firms and organisations to deliver expected and exceptional outcomes. Today, as companies are continuously transforming, the L&D culture is evolving too. Organisations need to adapt their corporate training strategies to keep abreast with the changing business needs. Keeping the speed and scale of digital transformation in mind, UpGrad for Business is focused on delivering measurable business efficiencies for organisations across employee productivity, business profitability and growth.
New Delhi: Looking to upscale its international operations, leading edtech firm upGrad has announced the appointment of Karan Raturi as general manager for North America.
A Wharton School alumnus, Raturi has held several leadership roles throughout his career. He joins upGrad from Wayfair, where he was head of business planning. Raturi has also worked as a consultant and advisor in corporate strategy, operations, private equity, venture capital, corporate development, and corporate finance with companies like IBM, Kurt Salmon, and Novartis Venture Funds, said the company in a statement, highlighting that it is looking to expand its presence and penetration in the US market with the right leadership at the helm.
Welcoming Raturi to his new role, upGrad CEO Arjun Mohan said, “Excited to have Karan join us as general manager for North America. He will be leading the P&L and will be responsible for driving revenue, along with scaling the business operations in the region. With a doubling of learners in this area organically, we are confident about the region’s prospects and certain that Karan’s skills, intellect, and leadership will help us grow as a world-class team to achieve our vision,” he said.
Commenting on his appointment, Raturi said, “I am thrilled to be part of such a robust and renowned team who have built a proven and trusted edtech brand in India. I look forward to deepening the brand’s presence in the region, and supporting learners across the US and Canada to build and accelerate their future careers.”
MUMBAI: upGrad has brought on Sendy Filemon as its country head for Indonesia. The development comes close on the heels of Zubin Gandevia’s hiring as CEO for Asia Pacific in January 2021. Filemon’s appointment to specifically look after the Indonesian market is a follow through of the company’s commitment to the country’s edtech sector and puts into motion to grow in the Asia Pacific region. He will be based in Bali.
Filemon is a digital entrepreneur who has founded two fintech start-ups and is a lifelong learner. He is currently taking a law degree from a top Indonesian university, which due to current pandemic conditions, is forced to accelerate its online learning model. This personal experience has motivated him to join upGrad and help fellow Indonesians to upskill and stay competitive as they face a new digital world.
“The combination of economic growth, changes in the workforce requirements, and increasing priority towards education have brought different challenges for both job seekers and employers, including here in Indonesia,” remarked Sendy. “upGrad is committed to address those challenges through locally relevant courses and become the bridge between job seekers and employers. I am very thrilled to join upGrad and am excited to bring real impacts for Indonesians through accessible higher education, regardless of time and distance.”
upGrad co-founder & chairman Ronnie Screwvala added, “Thrilled to welcome Sendy Filemon, whose strong cultural intellect coupled with sharp entrepreneurial skills will help us strengthen our presence in the APAC. At upGrad, we highly value local talents around the globe. Therefore, we will co-create Indonesia’s customised programs by synergising with local industry experts, university partners, corporates, and course mentors from Indonesia.”
The company continues to foster partnerships with higher education institutions and experts around the globe. In Indonesia, upGrad is partnering with both public and private universities to hand in hand accelerating the growth of Indonesian talents.
upGrad CEO – Asia Pacific Zubin Gandevia stated, “The appointment of Sendy Filemon as Indonesia Country Head emphasises our commitment to support the Indonesian government's continued efforts in enhancing the quality of higher education. Sendy will lead our mission to leverage upGrad’s proven online model and world class technology and bring it to life with 100 per cent Indonesian flavour to equip learners for the jobs of today, accelerating the careers of tomorrow.”
NEW DELHI: Ed-tech company upGrad has come up with a new campaign called #KaamKiDegree to promote its MBA vertical. Conceptualised by The Womb, the ad taps into the surging demand for online upskilling amid the pandemic, and seeks to spread awareness on the importance of getting a degree which will help execs climb the corporate ladder to a better position and role.
Shot remotely, the video reflects on the nostalgia of the quintessential childhood game of musical chairs. It highlights the dearth of seats for MBA degrees from ‘good’ universities, thereby reinforcing the brand positioning of Sirf Naam Ki Nahin, Kaam Ki Degree.
The company’s previous campaign featuring a donkey was a big hit and generated quite a buzz on social media. The ad showed employees coming to lick a donkey – or an ass in other words – in hopes of pleasing him. The donkey symbolises the boss, who gave priority to sycophancy over talent. At the end, the protagonist refuses to lick the donkey and ends the film by saying that he needs specialisation, not ass-licking, to get ahead in his career.
upGrad CEO – India Arjun Mohan said, “Our Donkey ad, owing to its bold messaging, was received well by our target audience and saw tremendous traction amongst users. We have also been able to translate the traffic into revenue, especially our management vertical which has seen an uptake for MBA programs.”
The Womb co-founder Navin Talreja said, “It is a poignant take on the education system and admissions infrastructure in the country which is enabling the growth of the ed-tech industry. We believe it will connect with students who despite being good do not get opportunities to pursue their dream education.”
Suyash Khabya, creative head at The Womb, added that the ad is rooted in culture and reality and offers one of the deepest insights to be seen in Indian advertising for a while.
NEW DELHI: The pandemic has proven to be a boon for the edtech brands helping them clock more downloads and bag new subscribers. Students, across age groups, have adapted to online learning as schools and learning institutions were forcibly shuttered and and moved online.
Both professional and school-level courses witnessed a spurt in takers. While professional courses are expected to make job search easy in this competitive market, the school courses prevented students from compromising on their learning during this time.
Experts say that the edtech space has accomplished more in the last 100 days than it did in the past five years. A white paper released by Ficci indicated that 92 per cent of learning leaders have confirmed the adoption of online learning journeys from 68 per cent in the pre-Covid2019 period.
A testimony to the growth of this sector is that investors are now keenly doling out hundreds of millions of dollars to startups with even edtech as part of their business plans. Media reports quoting Venture Intelligence data state that $998 million from just January 2020 to July 2020 as compared to $310 million a year ago has found its way into edtech startups.
A large part of that cash is going into category building and customer acquisition – through both digital marketing and promotion and expensive TV air time. With reason: they are trying to change old habits of physical face to face learning. And with that out of the question for a while now, it definitely would not harm anyone if they went in for an upskilling course which would give them a shot at getting a better job or designation or fancier increments.
The Ronnie Screwvala funded edtech venture upGrad has over the past month or so running a print, TV and digital campaign, Sirfnaamkinahin, kaamki degree’ to spread awareness on the importance of getting a degree which will help execs get kicked upstairs into a better position and role.
Based in an office, the TVC features a donkey – or an ass in common parlance – whom employees come and lick in the hope of pleasing him.. The donkey symbolises the boss who gives higher priority to smoothness over talent. Towards the end, the protagonist appears who refuses to lick the donkey and ends the film by saying that he needs specialisation, not ass licking to get ahead in his career.
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upGrad is clearly pushing its specialised courses and positions them as a tool that can help executives to rise. The media plan for the campaign includes 50 plus TV channels.
upGrad CEO Arjun Mohan says, “At upGrad, we have reiterated our age-old principle of ‘life-long learning’ across all our marketing efforts and brand campaigns, making it a new norm for individuals who are looking to upskill and re-skill. Especially during the current pandemic-induced lockdown period, where concerns like job loss, insolvency, and career ambiguity are looming, this mantra helped us resonate and connect with our audience better.”
Currently, it is running the TVC across Disney+hotstar and on TV during the Indian Premier League and hopes to grow by 300 per cent by this fiscal year-end.
The edtech brand had previously launched a campaign in February 2020 ‘Raho Ambitious.’ The previous campaigns from the online learning brand were mirroring the sentiments of working professionals. “With the changing times, we realised that what they lack is a means to achieve and materialize the ambition. Hence, a brand only claiming to fuel ambition will not serve a definite purpose in their lives, because it isn’t providing a solution that they urgently need now. Hence, we let go of the previous brand propositions and moved to ‘Sirfnaamkinahin, kaamki degree’, with which we promise to provide outcome-oriented specialisations, to help learners achieve the ROI on education; job/profile switch, increment or promotion, thereby supporting employability,” adds Mohan.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, upGrad has registered a massive upsurge in the traffic. Around 1,00,000 learners are logged in to the platform and over 8500 hours of live sessions have been conducted in the past three months (May – July). Media reports suggest that upGrad has a 500,000 -strong learner base, of which 32,000 are paid users. The company expects to close the current fiscal year with revenues of around Rs 1,200 crore. Small towns and non-metros are playing a key role in fueling the growth of the brand.
The brand is now ready to scale the number of learners to one million. Mohan says: “Moreover, given the Covid2019 scenario, we are now looking to double our quarterly revenue numbers. (We are considering Q4 – Jan, Feb, March is the pre-COVID-19 quarter and Q1 – April, May, June is post-COVID-19 for the data). While all verticals have grown in Q4 vs Q1, the MBA vertical has grown by 63 per cent in terms of revenue and 82 per cent in terms of learner base, making it the biggest winner.”
Other programs such as an MSc in data science witnessed a 60 per cent growth and PG certification in digital marketing and communication with Mica witnessed a 70 per cent growth in terms of revenue and learner base.
He further shares that the brand had to move from quarterly to monthly cohort launches, in order to cope with the increased demand for the online programs that it is experiencing.
upGrad has gone the whole hog on social media marketing as well, with the #DontBeAChaatuin August to synchronise with the release of the TVC. The campaign connected with the youth as did its funny short film ‘How to impress your boss’ with YoutuberBeYouNick (BYN), shortly thereafter. The sequence of activities triggered pop – culture influencers across platforms, who then contributed to the buzz and shared their personal experiences. Abhiand Niyu, Barkha Singh, AnkushBahuguna, Saloni Gaur, and AyushMehra amongst others joined the bandwagon to promote the idea of upskilling. Twitter heavyweights like Gabbbar, Sagarcasm, Trendulkar, also shared their views on corporate world culture to support the drive.
Mohan says, “At the beginning of the year, we announced a budget of Rs 175 crore for marketing. We will be largely present on TV and digital. We are strong on social media as well.”
He further explains that the brand is now expecting an overall surge in the television viewership. “This will increase the co-viewing window. Therefore, keeping the current situation in mind, the idea is to look at more mass media such as TV and accordingly shift our spending towards the same, supplementing it with digital. While we will continue to advertise targeting the metros due to new launches that we have in the pipeline. The consumers and prospective learners will now see upGrad more active in the smaller towns,” adds Mohan.
upGrad has recently announced a corpus of Rs 500 crore to expand internationally, especially in APAC, Europe and west Asia. Mohan is optimistic about the shift in the education space. He believes online learning is here to stay and the sector will continue to boom going forward.
The company has also introduced a wide range of free online programs across the areas of tech, management, and data to encourage users to utilise the extra time at hand, meaningfully. It has introduced ‘upGrad higher’, which is a free platform for all job portals for Covid2019 impacted professionals.
Screwvala and his teams have honed a special skill which can hopefully be imparted to other execs wanting to turn entrepreneur through upGrad: how to scale up companies from scratch, and in the process build high valuations.
