Edtech firm upGrad to hire 1,000 employees in 3 months to fuel expansion plans

New Delhi: Edtech platform upGrad, founded by entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala, is set to hire 1,000 people in three months to fuel its expansion plans.

The Mumbai-based firm had raised $120 million from Singapore’s Temasek in the last week of April, its first external funding since it was founded six years ago, to accelerate growth in its product offerings and geographic reach.

The edtech firm that operates in the higher education space said it will hire largely from smaller towns and cities and also from the pool of learners who have enrolled with its online courses.

“Our hiring plan is a result of the rapid growth that we have seen in the last 18 months. With global expansions taking shape, we are all set to ramp up our support and business teams to continue meeting the strong demand for life-long learning,” said Arjun Mohan, chief executive officer (India) at upGrad.

The firm will utilize the funds raised from Temasek to expand outside India and acquire smaller firms. upGrad has broken even and reported a revenue of ₹1,200 crore in 2020-21. The start-up has already expressed its aim to reach half a billion-dollar revenue by end of FY22.

“This hiring drive is expected to propel its growth in the right direction,” the edtech firm said Tuesday.

On 26 April, upGrad had said that it plans to use the fresh capital from Temasek to “further strengthen its team, scale global market operations, bolster its technology and product capabilities, pursue M&A opportunities, expand graduate and post-graduate degree portfolio in Indi and scale up operations to achieve its $2 billion revenue goal by 2026.”

“The opportunities are available across departments like Learning Experience, Delivery, Marketing, and Program, along with Sales which will remain predominant. The edtech (firm) will be hiring from its own learners’ talent pool through upGrad Rekrut, the recruitment and staffing solutions subsidiary of upGrad hiring drive,” the edtech firm said Tuesday.

upGrad, which was co-founded by Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli, offers job-linked online degrees, diplomas and certificate courses in collaboration with top Indian and global universities. It offers over 100 courses and has a collaboration with Michigan State University (US), Liverpool John Moores University (UK), Deakin Business School (Australia), Duke Corporate Education (US), Swiss School of Business Management, (Geneva), Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, among others.

“The idea to have fresh recruits come from tier II and III cities is to accelerate employability not just in metros but remote corners of the country,” said Mohan and added that fresh sales recruits will be working out of specially created ‘temporary safe workplace bubbles’ at five star hotel properties in Mumbai and Bengaluru, and is ready to create similar facilities in cities like Hyderabad, Delhi, and Kolkata.

After a tough employment environment in April and May when at least 23 million people lost their employment, the job market may revive a bit in next three months. On Tuesday, human resource firm ManpowerGroup said in a survey finding that sectors like transportations, services and education could lead the labour market gains in July-September 2021.