Online higher education company upGrad has acquired Bengaluru-based The GATE Academy (TGA) to foray into test preparation space, the company has announced recently.
The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Meanwhile, this is the first such merger and acquisition deal for the Mumbai-headquartered upGrad.
The GATE Academy is one of India’s premier coaching institutes offering comprehensive and rigorous coaching for GATE and several other public/government entrance examinations. It has close to 200,000 enrolled learners with 57 centres across the country. TGA is one of the first education institutes in India which leverages technology extensively to provide quality GATE coaching to its students. The company claims its learners have consumed more than 76 million video hours online.
According to upGrad, the government exam preparation market sees around 40 million applicants every year spending in a range of Rs 10,000 (per applicant). It said that the acquisition has opened up a new Rs 400-billion market for the company.
Commenting on the development, Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar, co-founders of upGrad, said in a joint statement,
“TGA provides upGrad a non-linear growth opportunity in new-segment entry and deeper penetration in the semi-urban and rural markets, which is in line with our core vision of making Bharat employable by adopting the mantra of lifelong learning. With every strategic move, we are ensuring that upGrad leads from the front as India emerges as the teaching capital of the world.”
According to a statement, post the acquisition TGA will operate as a subsidiary of upGrad and will continue with its brand name. Ritesh Raushan, founder of TGA, will pursue as the CEO of the entity to build this business line, with support from upGrad, who will be providing its proprietary online learning solution and tools for enhancing the learning experience, as well as its sales, marketing, and content prowess.
Expressing his excitement, Ritesh Raushan, Founder and CEO, The GATE Academy, said,
“We all are very excited to join hands with upGrad team. We aim to employ our extensive experience in both physical and online modes of teaching to create a world-class product that will bring fundamental changes in the way technology enables learning in the future.”
upGrad, a leading education technology company that currently operates in the online learning market and offers upskilling courses across age groups, also plans to invest over Rs 100 crore into this subsidiary and develop over 20,000 hours of content in multiple languages to provide access to at least one million test-takers annually.
