Byju’s-owned upskilling platform Great Learning has acquired Singapore-based Northwest Executive Education in a cash and equity deal.
The company did not disclose the financial details, but VCCircle had on May 10 reported that Byju's is paying less than $100 million for the business.
Post-acquisition, Northwest will continue to operate as an independent organisation under Mohit Jain, Tamhant Jain and Maitreyi Singhvi.
Both Northwest and Great Learning plan to leverage synergies to expand offerings portfolio and cater to markets across the US, India, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Founded in 2015, Northwest Executive Education, offers programmes from universities such as MIT, UC Berkeley, Yale, UCLA, University of Chicago and National University of Singapore, among others, and is expanding across the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
It focuses on programmes in management, leadership, technology, health care, innovation and other executive learning areas.
Northwest claims it has achieved a 99% completion rate since inception.
“Being bootstrapped, we have always focused on building a reputation for high-quality learning experiences that have helped executives and professionals grow in their leadership journey and careers, leading to more than 100 CXO transitions for our alumni.
With a move to online learning, we are expanding our live classrooms, and continue to emphasize faculty connect and peer interactions as the cornerstones of transformational learning experiences,” said Mohit Jain and Tamhant Jain, Co-founders of Northwest.
The announcement comes on the back of Byju’s raising $800 million led by founder Byju Raveendran. The round which valued Byju’s at a $22 billion valuation saw Sumeru Ventures, Blackrock and Vitruvian Partners participating with $400 million with the rest of the capital coming from Raveendran.
Byju’s acquired Great Learning in June 2021 in a $600 million deal, its second most expensive purchase so far.
The edtech giant also said that it would invest an additional $400 million in expanding the vertical, it said at the time. Through Great Learning, Byju’s entered the upskilling and reskilling segment.
Earlier this year, Great Learning acquired Superset which uses technology to make campus recruitments easier.
“Northwest complements the strengths of Great Learning, with a strong and expanding portfolio of programs from global top tier Universities,” said Mohan Lakhamraju, Founder and CEO of Great Learning.
Byju’s has made more than 18 acquisitions and two investments to date, according to a Traxcn report on February 22 this year.
In one of the largest deal in edtech, Byju’s paid $ 1 billion to acquire Aakash Education Services, which offers test preparation services in 2020.
Other high-profile acquisitions include coding platforms White Hat Jr and Tynker, reading skills platform Epic, and educational games platform Osmo.
