UpGrad acquires Harappa Education for Rs 300 crore

UpGrad co-founder Ronnie Screwvala.

Higher edtech unicorn UpGrad on July 22 announced it had acquired online learning platform Harappa Education at a value of Rs 300 crore.

With this, Harappa’s shareholders James Murdoch and Uday Shankar, through Bodhi Tree Systems, and co-founders Pramath Raj and Shreyasi Singh will join UpGrad’s captable.

“Similar to the integrated approach that we have been able to achieve in the B2C segment, we intend to offer a complete suite of products to our enterprise partners,” UpGrad co-founders Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar said in a statement.

“A combination of upskilling courses along with these critical skills that Harappa has to offer would set us apart. We see strong demand from our clients and with Harappa coming in, we believe we'll be able to grow exponentially within the segment as we cross-leverage the synergies.”

Harappa Education is expected to clock Rs 75 crore in revenue this year. It has an active clientele of 100 mid and large-sized organisations.

Co-founded by Pramath Raj Sinha, also the Founding Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB) and the Founder Trustee of Ashoka University, and Shreyasi Singh, ex-editor of India Inc, the New Delhi-based Harappa is an online learning institution offering self-paced upskilling courses to address issues like poor employability, inadequate leadership, and an ill-equipped workforce.

EY acted as the adviser for Harappa on the transaction.

“Pramath and Shreyasi come with a strong business legacy, which in turn, further fuels our ambition of becoming the global edtech leader,” the UpGrad statement said.

The acquisition comes a few days after UpGrad Rekrut, a subsidiary of UpGrad, acquired recruitment and staffing firm Wolves India.