Upskilling unicorn upGrad on Monday said it has secured $210 million (around Rs 1,638 crore) in a fresh round of funding from a clutch of investors including ETS Global, Bodhi Tree (a JV of James Murdoch and Uday Shankar) and Singapore's Kaizen Management Advisors Pvt. Ltd.
The round also saw participation from Bharti Airtel’s family office, Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office (Ambuja Cements and ACC), and Artian Investments (Family Office of Lakshmi Mittal - ArcelorMittal), with existing investors Temasek, IFC and IIFL.
Mumbai-based upGrad’s founder group also invested $12.5 million in this round to maintain their over-50% ownership in the company, it said in a statement.
With this new fundraise, upGrad looks to increase its team strength to 7,600 from the present 4,800. It also aims to include about 170 full-time faculty, 1,600 teachers, and over 5,000 on-contract coaches and mentors, the statement added.
UpGrad Education Pvt. Ltd, which runs the upGrad platform, was founded in 2015 by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli. This year, the company has made five acquisitions so far, including Exampur, taking the total tally to ten deals till date.
“We have always been capital efficient while growing 100% year-on-year and hope to retain that discipline," said upGrad co-founders, Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar in a joint statement.
UpGrad has remained bullish with its program completion rate of over 80%. 40% of the company's total revenue is realised from repeats and referrals year-on-year, it said.
The edtech industry, which boomed during the pandemic as teaching moved online, has witnessed major funding crunch and moderation in valuations with the reopening of educational institutions.
With a focus on conserving costs, several have resorted to mass layoffs and trimming discretionary spending.
Over the past several months, edtech unicorns Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu and other smaller players such as Lido Learning, FrontRow, Udayy, and SuperLearn have either fired or asked hundreds of employees to leave as they shut some of their operations to cut costs.
Besides edtech, the broader startup ecosystem has also suffered large layoffs with companies like FrontRow, Meesho, CityMall, Mobile Premier League, Cars24, MFine, Furlenco and Trell firing employees over the past few months.
