upGrad, the ed tech platform offering online course content, lectures and test material for college and university level students, has just announced that it has acquired Impartus, the learning solutions provider which makes use of video tutorials. The acquisition makes Impartus a fully owned subsidiary of upGrad, and costed the company ₹150 crore(about $20.5Mn).
From now on, Impartus will be known as ‘upGrad Campus’. The main aim of the service will be to provide world-class learning content, while making use of quality tools, to make education easier for students enrolled in colleges and other institutions involved in higher education. With this new acquisition, parent company upGrad hopes to see a revenue nearing ₹85 crore by the end of the fiscal year.
Amit Mahensaria, founder and former CEO of Impartus, who will continue to be the CEO at upGrad Campus, shared his views on the merger, saying that, “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.”
Taking over Impartus seems to be quite a wise move on upGrad’s part, as it strives to capture the market of online higher education in a country that is densely populated with ed tech startups.
Impartus was founded by Mahensaria, in collaboration with fellow IITians Manish Kumar and Alok Choudhary, and is known for making use of highly innovative and immensely interactive, cutting edge technology, to provide quality education solutions for its users.
Up till now, the main focus of the platform has been on making virtual classrooms available, so that students can interact freely with the teachers, for better understanding of concepts.
Ronnie Screwvala, a well-known name in multiple industries, and Co-Founder and Chairperson at upGrad, has said that the take-over will help then to further strengthen their foothold in the online education market, which currently stands at a mind-boggling ₹560 billion. He said, “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.”
Once in place, upGrad Campus will comprise of two different verticals, with widely different coarse options. The B2B vertical will mostly be focused on providing educational solutions towards higher education institutions. At the same time, the B2C vertical will deal much more closely with technical subjects of job-oriented importance.
This move, upGrad believes, will help it add an impressive 50,000 paid users.
