CIEL Group, India’s fastest-growing HR services platform, recently announced the acquisition of Mumbai-based upskilling startup Courseplay for an enterprise value of $2 million through a cash and share swap. As part of the agreement, the company will acquire a portion of Courseplay Founder Arjun Gupta’s investment as well as the entire stake of Inflection Point Ventures, the employee growth enablement platform’s largest external investor. The firm will reserve some shares for an ESOP pool.
CIEL aims to go public in the financial year 2025 (FY25), and this deal will help it become a technology-driven human resources solutions provider. With this acquisition, it also plans to strengthen its HRTech offering through the integration of Courseplay with its platforms like ProSculpt, HfactoR, Jombay, and CielJobs. According to the statement, the startup serves nearly 460 companies across industry sectors for temporary staffing needs and talent hunts for permanent positions in 2,600 companies.
Courseplay is the next-generation solution for 360-degree employee growth. Its AI-powered learning experience platform focuses on providing on-the-job, social, and formal learning in the workplace. Enterprises with significant frontline teams use its unified employee growth platform to automate the whole skill and talent development lifecycle. It enables businesses to collect data on employee performance, behaviour, competencies, development goals, learning, and other factors to generate automated suggestions for learning and growth activities. In January 2022, it raised Rs 3 crore in seed funding from Inflection Point Ventures.
Commenting on the acquisition, K Pandiarajan, Executive Chairperson of CIEL Group, stated:
We are happy to welcome Courseplay into CIEL’s family. The acquisition is a pivotal step in our journey towards emerging as one of the world’s most respected tech-led human resources solution providers. With our sights set on an initial public offering in the Financial Year 2025, this strategic move reinforces our dedication to driving growth and innovation in the human resources space. Together with Courseplay’s artificial intelligence-powered platform, we are poised to transform the employee learning experience and elevate our position as the top player in the industry.
Founded in 2015, CIEL has been a trustworthy partner to clients of various sizes and sectors throughout their growth journey. It is led by the most experienced and skilled personnel and is dispersed across 77 offices in 47 places across India. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the organization includes brands such as CIEL HR, India’s largest recruitment and staffing company in terms of geography; Jombay, the most prominent talent Assessment and Development platform; and Integrum, which offers HfactoR, a unified HRTech platform for managing the entire employee lifecycle in organizations.
In December 2022, the company acquired the talent assessment company Jombay and the Chennai-based IT staffing company Aargee Staffing Services in December 2023. CIEL Group expects its acquisitions to contribute 70% of its EBITDA and increase its revenue to Rs 1,100 crore in the current financial year. Pandiarajan and CIEL Group co-promoters Latha Rajan and Rajiv Krishnan will transfer their remaining stake in Ma Foi Strategy and Ma Foi Education (later renamed CIEL Skills) into the CIEL HR Group.
Arjun Gupta, Founder & CEO of Courseplay, added:
Today marks a momentous occasion for Courseplay. Since our founding, we have been dedicated to revolutionizing the learning and development industry, and I am incredibly proud to announce that CIEL is acquiring Courseplay. This is a natural next step in our journey, one that will allow us to amplify our impact on a global scale.
As part of the transaction, Gupta will continue as the CEO of Courseplay. After the integration with CIEL HR, 30 employees of Courseplay will join CIEL HR.
