Counselling Platform GrowthEx Acquires Edtech Startup Leapwired

Gurugram-based online counselling platform GrowthEX has acquired the technology platform of edtech startup Leapwired for an undisclosed amount.

Leapwired was founded in 2016 by Akshay Bhaskar, Aditya Goyal, Hemanth Bhatia, and Pranav Jang Bahadur. Leapwired is a telephonic consultation platform for students looking to make informed academic and career decisions. They are connected with experts to do so. It is based in Gurugram.

GrowthEx was founded in 2014 by Varun Saxena and Ayesha Raval. GrowthEx is an online platform enabling personal and professional growth through online counselling, programmes and peer engagement. It is facilitated by an online and offline community of learners sharing common growth goals.

The company also provides courses for K-12, entrance exams, certifications and up skills for working professionals.

GrowthEX claims to have more than 100,000+ users, 5,000+ counsellors and 1,000+ programmes. In addition to India, the platform has users in Singapore, Qatar, Brazil, and Nigeria.

The platform acts as a two-way learning marketplace. It enables instructors to host the courses on the platform and the learners to discover and access the online courses.

Talking about the acquisition GrowthEX CEO Varun Saxena said that it will help them build engaging internal and customer facing communities to improve customer engagement. The acquisition is also expected to help them improve the counsellor experience on the platform.

He further added, “We are working towards making personal wellness and online counselling much more scientific and personalised in days to come. The platform will use the power of data and peer engagement. It will leverage predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, to come up with proactive solutions for users, which may be used to enrich wellness at all the levels.”

In April 2017, GrowthEx raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a clutch of angel investors. At the time of funding, the startup said that the funds would be used to scale up the number of experts and programmes on the platform. The investment will also be used enhance technology and multifold increase the community engagement initiatives.

Globally, the education market is valued at $1.3 Tn, with edtech products market valued at $40 Bn. Online education in India will witness 8x growth in the next five years, as per a recent report by Google, KPMG. This will have a significant impact on the edtech market that has a potential to touch $1.96 Bn by 2021 from where it stands now i.e. $247 Mn. India is poised to be the third-largest online market for education.

As per Inc42 DataLabs, by Q1 2017, funds amounting to $21.34 Mn (disclosed funds) have already been infused in the Indian edtech space across 11 deals. Other startups apart from GrowthEx direct competitors include YourDost and Lybrate. While other players in the edtech space in India include  Simplilearn, BYJU’s, EduPristine,  Unacademy, Khan Academy, Udacity, Coursera, etc.