After Acquiring In July, upGrad To Invest Nearly $40 Mn In Harappa Education

Edtech unicorn upGrad said it will invest around $40 Mn (INR 320 Cr) in its portfolio company Harappa Education to build an online leadership school called Harappa Global School of Leadership.

Harappa Education will use the fresh capital to create a suite of leadership courses for diverse sectors and leadership roles. It further plans to hire talent for designing, content, marketing and pedagogy teams.

Harappa Education’s founder Pramath Raj Sinha will lead new initiatives at Harappa Global School of Leadership. The startup said under this initiative, it aims to train over 50K working professionals.

“There is a reskilling revolution taking place around the world, and the crying need for more leaders and entrepreneurs. Harappa brings unique insights into what it takes to hone your management skills with the right mix of domain expertise and therefore, we are doubling down and investing to bring these courses at affordable prices,” said Ronnie Screwvala, cofounder of upGrad. 

Set up in 2018 by Sinha and Shreyasi Singh, Harappa Education is a business-to-business edtech startup. It offers self-paced educational courses such as personality development, career growth and productivity, among others to working professionals.

Harappa Education said that its new initiative Harappa School of Leadership will be a global institution focusing primarily on leaders. It will offer a slew of live courses such as Accelerated Management, Design Leadership and Women’s Leadership program, among others to mid-senior level professionals.

“Never before has the world needed ever-increasing leadership capacity across sectors and industries. Harappa was built with the mission to teach leadership skills in an affordable, engaging, high-quality, and high-impact manner on a global scale,” Sinha said.

In July, upGrad bought Harappa Education for $38 Mn (INR 300 Cr) in a cash and share swap transaction.

upGrad, which was set up in 2015, offers an array of undergraduate, postgraduate and upskilling courses for college students and professionals. It claims to have a customer base of over 3 Mn across 100+ countries. 

Earlier this month, upGrad acquired corporate training startup Centum Learning. Prior to that, it bagged $210 Mn from investors including ETS Global, Bodhi Tree and Kaizen Management Advisors, among others.

So far in 2022, upGrad has acquired six startups–Centum Learning, Exampur, Harappa Education, Talentedge, WOLVES India and INSOFE.

In the fiscal year 2021-22, upGrad’s losses climbed up by 167.8% to INR 211 Cr from INR 78.8 Cr in the corresponding period last year. Meanwhile, its expenses widened by 112.8% to INR 513.7 Cr in FY21-22 from INR 241.4 Cr in FY20-21.