How Ronnie Screwvala’s Edu-Tech Is Bridging The Employability Gap Via Acquisition

With the onset of modern technologies, India has witnessed a major inclination towards online education over a period of few years. Many students and working professionals have joined different e-learning platforms in the past few years in order to enhance their skills. The market for online education in India is expected to witness a magnificent growth of eight times in the next five years and is predicted to reach USD 1.96 billion by 2021.

Backed by media entrepreneur, Ronnie Screwvala, online education company UpGrad Education Education Pvt. Ltd has acquired the online skilling platform, Acadview Software Pvt. Ltd. UpGrad targets professionals with online courses in entrepreneurship, digital marketing, data analytics and product management.

The benefit of this Acquisition

UpGrad is an online higher education company which offers working professionals and individuals, university education online through structured and rigorous programmes and facilities.

Whereas, Acadview enables young graduates to find their desired jobs by skilling them with in-demand technologies through online courses and industry projects.

With this acquisition, the online higher education company will bridge the employability gap for the market which has enrolments of 35 million students in colleges, institutions, across 50,000 higher education institutes and 800 universities. The company currently has tie-ups with institutes such as IIT-Bangalore, BITS-Pilani, IMT-Ghaziabad, MICA-Ahmedabad, and UK's Cambridge University.

Screwvala and Mayank Kumar, co-founders at UpGrad, in a joint statement, said, “UpGrad’s highly engaging online learning solution along with Acadview’s solid presence within the college space in India will allow us to deploy learning solution for college students at a massive scale.”

Equipping students with skills

The education industry in India is theory based, making it difficult for students to acquire skills relevant for getting jobs. With this acquisition, students will not only be equipped with necessary and desired skills but will also have numerous job opportunities.

Himanshu Batra, Founder and Chief Executive of Acadview, said, “Equipping students with engaging content, personalised coaching, hands-on experience with real-world projects and guidance from subject-matter experts in the industry can bring a step change in the quality of workforce available to employers.”

Acadview also helps young IT professionals make an extra living by teaching relevant courses and mentoring students.