UpGrad, the online education provider for working professionals, has acqui-hired Pyoopil Education Technologies Pvt Ltd, a mobile based SaaS (Software as a service) product used by corporates to deploy online training programs to be consumed by their employees on the go. This is in line with their plans to foray into the $1B+ corporate training market in India.
While UpGrad is consistently focused on equipping young professionals with employable skills, it has now extended this core value to corporates. With this acquihire, the online education platform is venturing into the $1 Billion+ corporate training market in India and expects to build a $100M revenue business in the next 5 years – while looking at a similar growth in the B2C segment. The company expects achieving a topline of $20M from its B2C business in the next fiscal year.
With a strong onslaught of digital and data across sectors, many jobs and skills are becoming obsolete. India’s IT services industry is expected to lose 640,000 “low-skilled” jobs to automation in the next five years. Unless corporates upskill their workforce, they are headed towards losing their competitive advantage. Given the strong push towards having a digitally and data aware workforce, UpGrad expects the $1B corporate training market to grow at ~20% in the next 5 years. The company also expects that the growth in this industry will be driven by M&A opportunities, given the fragmented nature of the industry.
Beyond training employees in new age skills, the corporate training industry will also witness a shift from offline-focused training approach to more online. ~40% of classroom training costs is spent on non-learning needs such as travel and lodging. UpGrad’s online offering aims to cut down those non-learning spend and channel the funds towards core learning requirements. Within the corporate training space, UpGrad is also looking at the pre-hire market where an online solution fits in well. Any fresher joining a company, needs to undergo 2-3 months of training before starting to contribute meaningfully. Training this fresh talent in the new age skills before they join the company can help companies save 2-3 man-months of revenue opportunity.
UpGrad has been roped in by leading companies across industries to customize programs for them in areas of data analytics, product management, digital marketing, etc. Companies such as Mahindra, Tata, HCL and many more have enrolled their employees in UpGrad’s programs. UpGrad has also partnered with Cognizant, Genpact, Gramener, Star TV, Disney, Uber, Google, Microsoft, BookMyShow etc; who have contributed to program content in the form of case studies.
“The Pyoopil team is driven by immense passion towards working in Ed-tech and strong product expertise having built an engaging mobile learning product. They will now be part of our team, helping us in the next phase of our product evolution.” added Mayank Kumar, Co-Founder and MD of UpGrad.
Pyoopil, founded almost three years ago, focused on building a learning product with strong elements of peer engagement and mentorship built in. The company had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Angel investors. Joining the UpGrad team, Pyoopil will continue working on building engaging, learning products for working professionals.
“Growing an education business is exciting and challenging. We have been in touch with UpGrad for some time now and given our shared drive and values on how we were approaching online education, we decided it would be best to join hands and do this together,” said Harsh Tripathi, Co-founder and CEO of Pyoopil.
UpGrad is currently in discussions with 30+ companies in efforts to develop and deliver customised programs; aiding them in achieving their full learning and development potential. “We are seeing a strong demand from companies who are looking to train their employees at a large scale. And UpGrad’s highly engaging online learning solution allows us to deploy learning solutions for enterprise at massive scale. Our new programs for corporate will focus on imparting skills around data, digital and innovation for workforce across corporates,” said Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar, Co-founders, UpGrad in a joint statement.
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