UpGrad has entered the unicorn club after being valued at $1.2 billion with a $185 million funding round on Monday. The round was led by Singapore-based Temasek while World Bank’s subsidiaries International Finance Corporation and IIFL also participated. The first section of this round concluded in April when it collected almost $120 million and arriving at a valuation of over $600 million as TechCrunch reported.
Ronnie Screwvala who is the co-founder and chairperson of UpGrad commented that “We are pleased with the investor interest ever since we opened up for fundraise, and had our maiden raise from Temasek, followed by IFC and IIFL in the last 60 days.”
UpGrad has been entering the global markets in recent months. The startup offers courses in the higher learning sector like data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain, finance, programming, and law. The universities which support the courses include Michigan State University, IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, and Swiss School of Business Management, Geneva. The platform claims that its courses have been accessed by more than a million users from different nations. It has now over 62,000 paid students. UpGrad being the 21st Indian startup to become a unicorn this year will use the funds for merger and acquisition opportunities.
The startup has been witnessing growth in recent quarters because of the move towards online learning and the shutting down of schools due to the pandemic. Similar ed-tech startups in India like Unacademy, Vedantu, and Byju’s are also showing positive growth and have attracted more investments in their recent funding rounds.
It is interesting to see leading investment firms such as Tiger Global, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Falcon Edge, and Temasek increasing their investments in India in recent quarters.
