Global digital skilling platform Simplilearn has raised $45 million in a new funding round led by GSV Ventures.
Clal Insurance and DisruptAD, ADQ’s venture platform, also participated in the round.
The company said it would use the funds to boost its growth plans in India and international markets.
Founded in 2010, Simplilearn offers digital skilling programs for professionals, enabling them to upskill and get certified in fast-growing digital domains. It offers more than 400 courses, including cyber security, cloud computing, project management, digital marketing, and data science among others, designed and updated by industry experts and influencers in their respective fields. In addition to self-paced online learning, live virtual classrooms, hands-on projects, and student collaboration, Simplilearn provides 24/7 live customer service and global teaching assistance.
Simplilearn creates its programs in collaboration with educational institutions including Caltech CTME, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, UMass Amherst and the Isenberg School of Management, Purdue University, Wharton Online, IIT-Roorkee, and IIT-Kanpur, and companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and KPMG.
“We continue to witness the accelerated need for a digitally skilled workforce across industries and Simplilearn continues to be focused on bridging the digital skill gap,” founder and chief executive officer Krishna Kumar said.
Simplilearn claims that it has seen significant growth in the past year and has added more than 120,000 paid business-to-consumer (B2C) learners, and more than 100,000 enterprise learners on its platform. This is in addition to the 2 million free learners that it adds to its SkillUp platform every year.
Bengaluru and San Francisco-headquartered Simplilearn has recently collaborated with the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management to offer a Post Graduate Program in Business Analytics. And earlier in March, it partnered with JobsForHer, an online platform for women’s careers, to train and upskill 1,000 women in the next year in Full Stack Java Development, making them job-ready for the future.
In July 2021, private equity firm Blackstone acquired a majority (more than 60%) stake in Simplilearn for $250 million, giving an exit for the company’s existing investors Kalaari Capital, Helion Ventures, and Mayfield Fund.
