upGrad acqui-hires online community platform CohortPlus

Professional education startup upGrad has acqui-hired CohortPlus, an online community for product managers and data science enthusiasts.

“With upGrad's support, CohortPlus intends to build a proprietary go-to platform for anyone looking to take a step up in their careers,” Srinivasan Narayan, founder and chief executive officer of CohortPlus, said in a statement.

Its rich consumer insights will enable upGrad to enhance its offerings for learners, the statement added.

CohortPlus enables members to post questions and get various perspectives from industry professionals. They can also seek assistance for job interviews on the platform.

“Employees in India are looking forward to picking up new-age skills to make themselves more relevant in the current workforce. upGrad’s highly engaging online learning solution along with CohortPlus’s deep penetration in the community of data scientists and product managers, will allow us to reach a much larger and relevant audience,” upGrad co-founders Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar said in a joint statement.

CohortPlus had raised angel funding in 2015 from Manish Maheshwari (managing director, Twitter India), Alok Mittal (founder of fintech startup Indifi) and Sujatha Kumar (head of marketing, Visa).

Bengaluru-based CohortPlus was founded in 2015 by Srinivasan Narayan.  The platform said its member base comprises more than 31,000 professionals from around the world.

UpGrad, started in January 2015, targets professionals with online courses in entrepreneurship, digital marketing, data analytics and product management. 

Last year, upGrad had acquired Acadview Software Pvt. Ltd, an online job skilling platform for undergraduates.

In 2016, the company had acqui-hired learning platform Pyoopil Education Technologies Pvt. Ltd, marking its entry into the corporate training segment.