BENGALURU: Edtech unicorn upGrad has raised $210 million in a round, led by ETS Global (the largest provider of global entrance tests TOEFL and GRE), Bodhi Tree (a JV of James Murdoch and Uday Shankar) and Singapore's Kaizen Management Advisors, among others. It is now valued at $2.25 billion.
The family office of Bharti Airtel and Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office (Ambuja Cements and ACC) also participated in the round. The founder group - Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli- invested $12.5 million in this round to maintain their over 50% ownership in the edtech platform.
upGrad, which started in 2015, said it is on track to record annual gross revenue of $400-500 million in this fiscal. Out of the total, about 45% of the total revenue will be realised from its own-branded online courses and programmes.
"There is a massive re-skilling revolution taking place around the world and over the last 5 years our 4800 colleagues have worked hard and smart to be at the epicenter of taking advantage of this, not just in India but around the world," said upGrad Co-founders, Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar in a joint statement.
They added that higher edtech will be on the rise for the next four to five decades. "upGrad in the last 12 months has re-shaped itself to be the most integrated company in this space," they said.
The founders added that they have always been very capital efficient while growing 100% year-on-year and hope to retain that discipline.
upGrad team strength will grow to 7600 from the present 4800 in the next 3 months, and will also include about 170 full-time faculty, 1600 teachers, and over 5000 on-contract coaches and mentors.
The edtech platform is bullish with its program completion rate of 80%. upGrad has offices in the UK, US, Middle East, India, Singapore and Vietnam, among other countries.