upGrad, one of the globally popular online teaching portals, has closed a deal to acquire Impartus for Rs 150 crore. Impartus is popular to provide tools to capture ongoing classroom lectures into a video form that helps students to repeat the lectures in case of doubts. With the current acquisition, upGrad looks to offer its courses in colleges and other educational institutions.
How Impartus Acquisition will Help upGrad?
To strengthen its operations, further, upGrad got success in acquiring Impartus, an online video learning platform. Kaizen, the existing investor of Impartus, will take an exit from Impartus. It invested $4.1 million in Impartus in 2015.
As per the current agreement, Rs 50 crore of the current deal amount will be used as an investment in Impartus for further growth of the online platform.
Now, Impartus will be rebranded as upGrad Campus that will help upGrad to scale up its operations in higher education institutions and colleges.
Impartus co-founder Amit Mahensaria will work as Chief Executive in upGrad Campus, and it will still operate independently.
Impartus helps students and educational institutions in shifting to the online environment. It provides features including recording class lectures and reviews supplementary course material at any time.
upGrad’s target audience is working professionals. Current acquisition will help upGrad to reach a younger user base and it will offer its skill-oriented courses to Impartus students.
this acquisition will also help upGrad access 600,000 students and 280 higher education databases earned by Impartus. upGrad also targets to add 50,000 new students in the current fiscal year. It also wants to achieve Rs 85 crore revenue by 2022.
Future Plans of upGrad
Ronnie Screwvala, chairman and co-founder, upGrad, also talked about the further growth plan of upGrad.
He said:
“We want to cater to every individual’s learning above the kindergarten to grade 12 segment. Impartus is a technology enabler for colleges and we will be augmenting and integrating the platform with upGrad’s short courses (1- 4 months) for the same base.
He also added:
“Further, cementing a learning relationship with college students early means that they may continue using upGrad, in the future, to take test prep for government jobs or upskilling courses in their professional career.”
Screwvala further revealed that upGrad will continue acquiring edtech startups that have short-term courses to strengthen its operations in the US, Australia, and Indonesia. The startup also raised $120 million last month to make its plan a reality.
Excluding Impartus, upGrad has also acquired other edtech startups including an online training software platform, Pyoopil; online job skilling platform, Acadview; and product community platform, CohortPlus. upGrad also bought Rekrut India, the Gate preparation edtech startup.
What kind of issues Indian Students are facing? How Impartus will help upGrad to address them in the future? Answering these questions, Amit Mahensaria, CEO, upGrad Campus said:
“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 higher education institutions.
He further added:
“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.”
