Edtech firm upGrad has acquired Mumbai-based enterprise training company Work Better and onboarded the latter’s entire team including chief executive Swapnil Kamat.
Mayank Kumar, co-founder and managing director of upGrad, said the acquisition will fuel his company’s ambition of becoming one of the leading integrated life-long-learning tech companies in the world. upGrad for Business, the business-to-business (B2B) arm of the edtech firm, has executed this deal.
“Enterprise L&D (learning and development) is coming of age now. This synergy, hence, is aptly timed,” Kumar said without giving details of the deal size.
“The rise of multifunctional roles which require new-age subject knowledge is constantly pushing medium and large-sized organisations to re-think their L&D strategies not just for skilling their talent pool but also for retaining them,” said Minaxi Indra, president, upGrad For Business.
“Hence, with the two majors coming together, we look forward to empowering organisations with market-ready and future-ready skills in order to train their workforce with the best of technical leadership and managerial varieties,” Indra added.
The 14-year-old Work Better specialises in soft skills training, sales training and leadership training via both classroom and virtual learning solutions. It has a client base of over 300 corporates and 250 plus trainers to offer its training solutions.
According to Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions’ September report, L&D is increasingly being viewed as a strategic investment, and two in three organisations are looking to plug the skills gap through internal upskill and reskill training initiatives.
“Work Better has deep-rooted expertise in soft skills, sales and behaviour training, while upGrad is a leader in technical and hard skills training. With this consolidation, we both can leverage each other’s expertise to add further value and provide holistic solutions to customers,” said Kamat, CEO of Work Better.
Last week, upGrad’s Kumar had told Moneycontrol that his firm is actively looking for non-linear growth options through acquisitions and looks to step up focus on the outcome and profitability this year.
upGrad had acquired global edtech company KnowledgeHut in August 2021.
Founded in 2015, upGrad is an online education firm in the high education and professional upskilling space. In August 2021, it had closed $185 million in external funding from Temasek Holdings, International Finance Corporation and IIFL at a valuation of $1.2 billion.
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