upGrad acquires recruitment and staffing startup Rekrut India

upGrad Education, the edtech startup promoted by media industry veteran Ronnie Screwvala, has acquired recruitment and staffing solutions company Rekrut India for an undisclosed amount.

Mumbai-based upGrad, in a statement, said the acquisition will open up wider placement opportunities for its career business.

“Our M&A strategy is focused towards building a wider higher education and career ecosystem and Rekrut fits in perfectly with its capabilities to drive tangible ROI for our learners. upGrad’s plans of 300% growth in its paid learner base and driving career outcomes for these 1.2 million learners by FY25, will be further accelerated with this strategic acquisition,” Gaurav Kumar, president of corporate development at upGrad, said.

Mumbai-based Rekrut India was founded by former Teamlease executive Ajay Shah in August this year. With a network of over 100 recruiting experts, it offers recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and recruiter on demand (ROD) solutions to enterprises. 

It also provides an applicant tracking system (ATS) that enables the electronic handling of recruitment and hiring needs.  

“The upGrad-Rekrut synergy will disrupt the ecosystem and build an end-to-end supply chain of manpower, where Rekrut is the demand partner providing cutting-edge jobs and upGrad will supply the highly skilled, and future-ready talent. We will be taking the learners’ pipeline to the relevant industry stakeholders thereby helping them find the right talent with speed, while in parallel offering a wider choice of career transition for upGrad learners,” Shah said.

The company claims to have a geographical reach of more than 600 cities, across 50 functional areas.

Post acquisition, Rekrut India will become a 100% subsidiary of upGrad, operating independently under the leadership of its managing director Ajay Shah.

According to the company, upGrad’s in-house career services team reaches out to around 100-200 hiring partners in a year and has enabled over 1,000 career transitions in 2020, with an average salary hike of 44%. With the acquisition of Rekrut, the company expects the current volume to grow 10-fold.

Founded by Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli in 2015, upGrade claims to have impacted about 1 million individuals globally. It provides online programmes in the areas of data science, technology, management and law to college students, working professionals and enterprises.

This is upGrad’s fifth acquisition in four years.

It acquired Pyoopil Education Technologies in October 2016 to build a training programme targeted at companies. Pyoopil offered a mobile-based SaaS service for corporates to deploy training programmes. 

In 2018, upGrad bought AcadView.com, which provided skill-oriented training with blended online sessions from more than 700 industry experts. 

Less than a year later, it acquired CohortPlus, an online community for product managers founded by Srinivasan Narayan. CohortPlus also curated product manager jobs, with status and feedback for all applicants.  

upGrad ventured into the test preparation market with the acquisition of Gate Academy (TGA) in November. TGA helps students prepare for one of the most competitive exams in the country—the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). It targets a market of learners, long before they become working professionals.