upGrad forms UK board to expand international operations

Mumbai headquartered upGrad Education, which runs an edtech platform, on Thursday announced the appointment of an independent UK board of four members to accelerate its expansion in the UK.

The board comprises of  Deian Hopkin, principal advisor at Wells Advisory and associate partner at Anderson Quigley; Julie Mercer, ex-global industry lead for Deloitte’s education practice and current partner at Cairneagle Associates;   Kishore Sengupta, reader in operations at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge and Ashwin Assomull, partner at LEK Consulting.

“The appointment of this board signals our commitment to moving aggressively ahead with our international expansion strategy,” Phalgun Kompalli, co-founder, upGrad, said in a statement.

upGrad said that it aims to build a strong UK-based business operations wing to help with expansion in the region, as well as undertake development projects in other global markets.

Read: Is UpGrad spreading itself too thin too fast? 

"One clear consequence of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic has been to widen the search for new ways of delivering high quality higher education,” Hopkin said on being appointed to the board.

Mercer has over 20 years of experience handling Deloitte’s education practice, while Sengupta has been associated with roles at French business school Insead and California’s naval postgraduate school.

Assomull in his former role was partner and member of the emerging market’s leadership team at Boston based business advisory services firm Partheon Group.

upGrad had recently on-boarded former Disney chief Zubin Gandevia as CEO, Asia-Pacific. In September 2020 it announced that former Amazon executive Saranjit Sangar as the CEO of UK and EMEA markets.

The startup launched in 2015 as an online platform with a focus on working professionals. It has since partnered with 10 universities in India and less than five higher education institutes from countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia.