Scaler Academy, an up-skilling platform for tech professionals and college students, has acquired New Delhi-based live programming courses platform Coding Elements in an all-cash deal.
The deal is reportedly worth about $1 million (close to ₹8 crores). This marks the edtech startup’s first acquisition to accelerate business growth.
With this acquisition, Bengaluru-based two-year-old startup Scaler aims to bring synergies between the two companies to strengthen and expand professional upskilling offerings.
As a part of the deal, Coding Elements has been merged with Scaler Academy. Coding Elements Founder Mudit Goel will join Scaler as its strategy and product lead. In his role, Goel will build the data science and machine learning vertical and will also help in deepening Scaler’s relationship with industry partners.
Coding Elements was founded in 2017 by Mudit Goel with a vision to create the next generation of coders by training them with the latest in-demand tech skills such as Data Science, Machine Learning, and Full-Stack Web and Mobile App development. The startup also offers coding courses for kids to access live class formats and opportunities in international markets.
Within two years, the Coding Elements team worked with over 4000 students through in-person classroom courses before going entirely online in 2020. NITI Aayog also handpicked the platform to teach coding to 2 million students across 6,000 schools under Atal Innovation Mission.
Started in 2019 by IIT Hyderabad alums Anshuman Singh and Abhimanyu Saxena, Scaler Academy is focused on college students and tech professionals. The platform also provides mentorship to help pupils crack recruitment processes as well as provides referrals for software opportunities.
Announcing the acquisition, Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-founder, Scaler & InterviewBit, said,
“This acquisition will enable us to further strengthen our upskilling platform by expanding our course offerings beyond core software engineering. The acquisition is another step towards accelerating our growth and making Scaler a world-class virtual tech university.”
Saxena further added, “We continue to assess and evaluate potential M&A opportunities in the segment that matches Scaler’s vision and mission.”
Mudit Goel, Founder, Coding Elements has said,
“Coding Elements was started in 2017 with just three students in the first batch as an experiment to understand how high-quality education can help improve the lives of families. Within four years, we reached two million students across 6000 schools and saw how education can uplift an entire economy. I’m happy to have joined hands with Scaler, which is also on the same mission and am excited to be a part of one of the most dynamic teams in the edtech sector. This strategic merger with Scaler is truly a satisfying moment as it makes our journey bigger and better.”
Scaler Academy said, at present, the company has over 500 employees and 1000 mentors and teaching assistants on its platform. So far, more than 7,500 learners have joined Scaler’s educational programmes.
As a testament to its growth, Scaler Academy has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by investors like Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global and Rocket Internet, among others, in January 2020. The startup also recently made five key leadership appointments to accelerate the business growth and introduced Data Science and Machine Learning programs to expand its offerings.
