GSV leads $45m round for India's Simplilearn
GSV Ventures has led a USD 45m round for Indian education technology provider Simplilearn. The Blackstone Group acquired 70% of the company last year for USD 250m.
Clal Insurance and DisruptAD, a venture platform controlled by the Aub Dhabi government, also contributed to the latest round. Blackstone’s investment included support from Helion Venture Partners and provided exits for Kalaari Capital and Mayfield India.
Kalaari was the first institutional investor, having backed the company has early as 2012 and joined at least two subsequent rounds, according to AVCJ Research. Previous backers also include venture debt firm InnoVen Capital and Brand Capital, the strategic investment arm of The Times Group.
Simplilearn is touted as a global leading online digital skills training boot camp and certifications preparation service. It creates programs in collaboration with educational institutions such as Caltech CTME, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, UMass Amherst, Purdue University, and Wharton Online, as well as companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and KPMG.
The platform offers more than 100 programmes to help early to mid-career professionals acquire skills across cloud, data science, artificial intelligence, digital marketing, cybersecurity, and DevOps (software development and IT operation) among others. Demand is said to have increased since the onset of the pandemic.
“The Blackstone investment last year came at an ideal time to boost our growth globally, and further strengthen our customer-centric approach,” CEO Krishna Kuma said in a statement. “This [GSV-led] funding came at a time when the industry is going through turmoil and stands as a testimony to our steady, profitable growth.”
According to Avendus Capital, which advised Simplilearn on the latest transaction, the company has added more than 120,000 paid B2C learners and more than 100,000 enterprise learners in the past year. This is in addition to the more than 2m free learners that it adds to its SkillUp platform every year.
“With immense experience investing and working with education firms around the world, it is certain that the demand for knowledge-gain and upskilling is omnipresent,” Deborah Quazzo, a managing partner at GSV, added. “Like many other sectors, technology is disrupting education, and edtech has been a key focus area for us.”
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