Blackstone announced today that private equity funds managed by Blackstone (“Blackstone”) have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a controlling stake in Simplilearn Solutions Pvt Ltd., an online learning ‘bootcamp’ based in India offering digital skills training and courses to working professionals all over the world.
Simplilearn was founded in 2010 by its Chief Executive Officer Krishna Kumar. Profitable for the fourth year in a row, the platform offers over 100 programs to help early to mid-career professionals acquire new-age digital skills across Cloud, DevOps, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Digital Marketing, Cyber Security and many more.
Krishna Kumar, Founder & CEO, Simplilearn, said: “The pandemic has only accelerated the need for digital skills and the industry has demonstrated absolute readiness for upskilling online. Hence, this is the most opportune time to take the next big leap in our journey to build the world’s largest digital skilling company. We believe Blackstone can add significant value to our company because of their scale, commitment to building businesses, and global network, which will enable us to develop partnerships with businesses and universities as Simplilearn continues to expand around the world.”
Amit Dixit, Head of Asia for Blackstone Private Equity, said: “This is Blackstone’s first private equity investment in Asia in a consumer technology company. Like many other sectors, technology is disrupting education and education technology has been a high conviction theme for Blackstone in India and globally. We are excited to partner with Krishna Kumar and Simplilearn’s top-notch management team to accelerate growth and build the world’s pre-eminent digital learning company, and we expect this to be the first of many such investments in Asia.”
Mukesh Mehta, a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, said: “We have been impressed with Simplilearn’s synchronous model of pedagogy focused on delivering superior outcomes for its learners.”
Blackstone brings global expertise in education technology, including the partnership with Aakash Educational Services and Byju’s to build India’s largest digitally enabled, omnichannel education company; acquisition of Ascend Learning, which provides technology-based educational content and software tools for students, institutions, and employers; and recent investments in Ellucian (a leading software provider to universities) and Articulate (a SaaS training and development platform for companies).
