Skill-Lync, an EdTech startup that provides job-leading courses for engineering students/graduates across all disciplines, has acquired Crio, an experiential learning platform for tech careers, in an attempt to enhance its offerings in the higher education space at a time when competition intensifies in the segment amid a downturn in online learning.
With this deal, Crio will operate as an independent brand under the Skill-Lync Group.
According to an official statement, the founders of Crio will continue to focus on and run Crio’s business and growth, post the acquisition. The company, however, did not disclose the deal size.
Founded in 2018 by Suryanarayanan Paneerselvam and Sarangarajan V Iyengar, Skill-Lync helps upskill engineering students in line with the industry needs. The platform provides job-leading courses in mechanical, electrical, civil, and computer science engineering domains for students in India and other parts of the world. It claims to be the first-of-its-kind engineering technical education platform that offers the above courses. The Chennai-based startup also claims that it helps over 30,000 students from all parts of India with such courses.
Commenting on the acquisition, Co-founder of Skill-Lync, Suryanarayanan Paneerselvam, said:
Both Crio and Skill-Lync, were started because we wanted to solve a fundamental issue in higher education, i.e. making engineers industry relevant… As both companies come together, we believe that we have a unique opportunity to build one of the best higher education platforms where we can provide value at scale.
Crio, co-founded by Rathinamurthy R and Sridher Jeyachandran in 2018, helps students and professionals to learn practical skills by working on real-world projects. The startup is also backed by Binny Bansal and other former Flipkart employees.
Crio is on a mission to empower developers with high quality applied learning opportunities at scale, and nurture the talent for the future. It is building a platform that would fundamentally change the way tech is learnt through its “work-like” Micro-Experiences. Crio Micro-Experiences provide an environment optimised for learning, with real world problems curated from the industry.
Co-founder of Crio, Rathinamurthy R, added:
We are really excited to become part of the Skill-Lync Group which shares a similar mission and approach towards learning, looking forward to scaling the impact together.
Both the startups are together aiming to support over 25,000 students with relevant job opportunities in the next two to three years, with this acquisition, it said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Skill-Lync, announced its partnership with Mangalayatan University, one of India’s most renowned universities with the aim to help engineers become more employable. It has raised a total of $20 million in funding. The startup is backed by investors like Y Combinator and Better Capital and also received investment from Flipkart’s Binny Bansal in its latest funding round.
