upGrad made a special agreement for to acquire Arena Education Services, the holding company of Talentage Education Ventures, will be one of the major consolidators in the Indian higher education sector.
Screwvala, chairperson of Upgrade told ET, “We are by far the leader in higher education in India. “Currently, we are twice that of the next player, but we want to increase the gap to 4X before we run out.”
He said Upgrade has cemented its leadership position as the most integrated player in higher education in Asia, serving learners and working professionals in the age group of 18-50 years.
“Talentage has meticulously built a strong business over the past decade and remained in a position where most did not survive, and we are very pleased to welcome them to the upgrade as we build one of the largest edtech companies in the world,” said Screwvala.
While he refused to disclose takeover Costing Talent, he said the company will generate revenue of Rs 130 crore this fiscal, and double it next year. But knowledgeable people put the value of the transaction at Rs 350-400 crore.
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Aditya Malik, chief executive of Talentage, said: “Talentage will continue to work with its university and institute partners to provide quality education to its learners in degree and certification programs.”
GATE Academy (November, 2020), Recruit India (December, 2020), KnowledgeHut (August, 2021), Impartus (May, 2021), and Global Study Partners (GSP), the largest study abroad company in Australia (November, 2021) ).
Last month, Upgrade merged Upgrade Campus (originally Impertus), Upgrade Win (The Gate Academy), and Upgrade KnowledgeHut to consolidate and form a single parent company.
“Being an integrated company was always a vision. I have done the same in Media (UTV Software Communication), and in EdTech too, we will follow an integrated approach,” said Screwvala.
However, he added that while it looks like the upgrade is on an acquisition spree, it is not. “It may seem like we are M&A aggressive, but we are not. I am a firm believer of Build vs Buy. However, this space is now open to some consolidation. For us, the criteria for M&A are something like Which becomes a very integral part of us the next day.”
Founded in 2015 by Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompally, Upgrade recently became a unicorn, with a $185 million funding round in August at a valuation of $1.2 billion.
Screwvala said the company is not actively looking for further fundraising, although there is “a lot of demand to come”. “At some level, we can serve that too. We just raised money, so we don’t need to raise any more.”