Edtech company upGrad has acquired KnowledgeHut – which has operations in the GCC – as part of its ambitious mergers and acquisitions drive over the next seven to nine months.
The company has recently announced that it had earmarked USD 250 million for their plans to drive non-linear growth and that some of these target companies were based in the MENA region.
upGrad recently announced online learning programs for UAE and Saudi professionals that are designed to accelerate careers and grow regional businesses. With KnowledgeHut – now rebranded as ‘KnowledgeHut, an upGrad company’ – it gets access to a global learner pool of 250,000 students.
KnowledgeHut is expected to cross USD 40 million revenue next year, 65% of which will be from countries across the Middle East, North America, and South-East Asia.
KnowledgeHut started its Middle East operations in 2018 and achieved 250% growth in less than three years of its operations. It is taking significant steps to become the preferred technology learning partner in an industry, which has close to USD 148 million capacity, including KSA (43%), UAE (28%), Kuwait (11%), Bahrain (3%), Qatar (8%), and Oman (7%).
With this acquisition, upGrad is venturing into the short duration upskilling and reskilling segment, which has a market potential of over USD 58 billion. It can now offer learners a scalable and immersive learning model, to upskill and help them drive meaningful career outcomes, through its flagship learning experience platform, PRISM.
Aligned with the high priority given to localisation initiatives by GCC countries, KnowledgeHut’s ‘Skill to Employ’ Bootcamp Program helps young, ambitious individuals become industry-ready professionals. Fresh university graduates (irrespective of their academic background) can boost their employability quotient and industry work readiness. KnowledgeHut’s target in GCC is to partner in government localisation initiatives to train/enable more than 100,000 individuals over the next three years.
Ronnie Screwvala, Chairperson & Co-Founder of upGrad, said: “With KnowledgeHut on board, our focus on being an integrated Lifelong Learning partner for powering career success for the global one billion workforce just got stronger. KnowledgeHut’s presence in 70+ countries will further upGrad’s ambition of liberalising quality online education around the world.”
Founded by Subramanyam Reddy in 2011, KnowledgeHut is a leading international edtech company, focused on equipping the global workforce with the skills of the future through outcome-based immersive learning. KnowledgeHut will now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of upGrad and Reddy will be at the helm in his new role as the CEO.
“With our focus on short-term professional upskilling, KnowledgeHut is driving outcome-based immersive learning for global technologists and the wider professional community. Given our position in global markets, this synergy with upGrad will further strengthen and support that vision. The acquisition paves the way for upGrad to empower B2B customer segments across geographies including the United States and the Asia Pacific,” said Reddy.
As a leading skills solutions provider, KnowledgeHut has trained over 250,000 professionals and empowered over 500 enterprises to build the skills that drive results, with a product offering of over 200 courses across in-demand areas of Web Development, Machine Learning / AI and Data Science, Agile and Project Management, IT Service Management, Cyber Security and Cloud Computing.
