IBL News | New York
Upgrad Education, led by Indian entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala, is in the advanced stages of acquiring this year for $80 million the Silicon Valley online education platform Udacity, one of the three big MOOC platforms, along with Coursera and edX/2U, according to The Economic Times.
Sebastian Thrun-founded Udacity was last valued at $1 billion in 2015 after it raised $105 million from investors like Germany’s Bertelsmann and Scotland’s Baillie Gifford. VC Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is also one of its investors.
Upgrad founder Ronnie Screwvala [in the picture], who owns of 22.4% in Upgrad, has pitched to external investors for about $50-60 million.
According to the same source, the Mumbai-based Upgrad is trying to raise up to $100 million, of which about 80% will be used for financing the deal.
If this funding round is completed, the valuation for Upgrad will see a jump from its last assessment of $2.5 billion.
Upgrad has raised $365 million since its inception in 2015.
California-based Udacity offers courses across data engineering, business analytics, artificial intelligence, data science, product management and others. Udacity has three key verticals: individuals, government, and enterprise. The enterprise business is the largest revenue driver for the US-based firm.
.
