Byju’s-owned Great Learning acquires Northwest Executive Learning in $100 million deal

Bengaluru: Byju's group company Great Learning has acquired Singapore's executive education firm Northwest Executive Education in a stock and cash deal of around $100 million, according to people aware of the matter.

This is yet another investment from the Bengaluru-based Byju’s in the executive education space after it acquired Great Learning in a $600 million deal in July last year.

In February, Great Learning had bought out Superset, a recruitment platform, in what was its first acquisition.


Founded in 2015, Northwest Executive Education offers programmes in management, leadership, technology, healthcare, innovation and other in-demand executive learning areas. It is said to have participants from over 50 countries.

Post the acquisition, Northwest will continue to operate as an independent organisation and its cofounders, Mohit Jain, Tamhant Jain and Maitreyi Singhvi will remain its leaders, sources briefed on the matter said.

When contacted, a Byju’s spokesperson declined to comment while founders of Northwest Executive Education could not be reached for a comment, immediately.

The Singapore-based Northwest has partnerships with universities like MIT, UC Berkeley, Yale, UCLA, University of Chicago, and others. Going forward, Northwest Executive Education and Great Learning would work on leveraging synergies to expand their offering across markets like India, Asia, US, Latin America and Europe.

This will have a blended approach as well meaning both online and offline channels, people quoted above said.

At the time of Great Learning acquisition, Byju’s had said it had earmarked another $400 million of investment into the professional skilling and life-long learning segment.

Since the Byju’s deal last year, Great Learning has expanded operations and now has around four million learners from more than 170 countries along with a network of over 4,700 industry experts.

Backed by Silver Lake, Blackrock, and other investors, Byju’s spent more than $2 billion in acquisitions last year with brick-and-mortar coaching network Aakash Institute being its biggest M&A till date. The Aakash deal was valued at nearly $ 1 billion. Epic, Toppr are some of its other prominent acquisitions.

ET reported on March 4 that former Myntra and KKR Capstone executive Ananya Tripathi was joining coding platform Whitehat Jr as its CEO. She joined the company later that month.

Byju’s is valued at $22 billion after it announced a $800 million funding round in March where company founder Byju Raveendran is investing $400 million on his own to increase his stake in the firm. Sumeru Ventures, Vitruvian Partners, and BlackRock were the other investors who participated in the capital raising.