Allen Appoints Meta Executive Abha Maheshwari As CEO Of Edtech Arm

Allen Career Institute has appointed Meta executive Abha Maheshwari as the CEO of the edtech vertical–Allen Digital. In her new role, she will be building digital and tech teams in Bengaluru to help create digital-first products for the students.

At Meta, Maheshwari worked as director and head of commerce & payments, product partnerships for India, and overall her association with the company counts more than two years.

Other than that, she has also worked with Cadence Design Systems and Magma Design Automation. 

She is an alumnus of IIT Bombay from where she completed her bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and holds a Master’s in Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business, Berkeley.

Commenting on the appointment , Nitin Kukreja, CEO, Allen Career Institute, said, “We are excited to have Abha join us to lead our digital initiatives. Her expertise in product management, growth, and partnerships in global consumer technology companies will help bolster our efforts to scale digital-first consumer experience at Allen.” 

He furthered that this appointment marks Allen’s continued commitment to strengthening its leadership team by bringing in top talent from across the globe.

Allen aims at further strengthening its technology leadership team with recent hires of Ankit Khurana as chief product officer and Saurabh Tandon as chief technology officer. 

In the last six months, Allen has recruited talent from leading global and Indian consumer tech companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, Flipkart, Samsung, Twitter, and others. 

The institute plans to scale its technology and product teams in Bengaluru to 200 by the end of 2023.

Last year, Allen got into a conflict with edtech platform Unacademy over roping in teachers for its offline coaching centres. In addition, the coaching centre also ended up launching a digital platform to take on the edtech players of the Indian market. 

Though the Indian edtech market is going through a cost optimisation drive to keep afloat during this funding winter, there are few green shoots as well. Earlier this month, Physics Wallah announced plans to invest INR 100 Cr to further scale up its UPSC vertical. 

Further, after struggling for some time, BYJU’S reportedly raised $250 Mn through structured investments from the US-based alternative investment firm Davidson Kempner.

Also, Google backed edtech startup Cuemath has restructured its management while making Manan Khurma its full-time CEO.