upGrad's acquisition of test-prep provider Exampur may hit roadblock

Disagreement over valuation of Noida-based company which wants more from the deal, says source

Edtech unicorn upGrad’s acquisition of Exampur, a test-prep provider for government jobs, may hit a roadblock. The two companies are re-evaluating the transaction and the acquisition may not materialise, according to sources.

One person said that upGrad is an enterprise-oriented firm, while Exampur wanted to continue focusing on test preparation. "Due to this there is an issue of alignment," said a person aware of the matter.

“Exampur founders may back out from the deal. “There was a disagreement related to valuation, where Exampur was asking for a market valuation of Rs 200 crore and upGrad agreed to Rs 125 crore,” said another source.

Exampur didn’t respond to a request for comment. An upGrad spokesperson said: “we are presently very focused on Adult Learning and therefore, this is a strategic call for us, and are happy to re-evaluate this in the future. There have been no disagreements on the valuation.”

After focusing on upskilling working professionals, upGrad scaled up operations for clients in India’s hinterlands by acquiring Exampur in August this year. The deal was valued at about Rs 125 crore, said sources. Exampur looks to close revenue of Rs 70 crore this fiscal. Taking up the test preparation business puts upGrad into direct competition with SoftBank-backed Unacademy and Adda247.

Noida-based Exampur, which was co-founded by Vivek Kumar and Vardan Gandhi in 2018, has a user base of over 10 million students. It offers over 200 test-prep courses for government jobs, delivering the content through more than 27 YouTube channels.

These courses include ones for the UPSC, SSC, defence, banking, teaching, and other State-level Government job preparations.

The acquisition of Exampur was expected to help upGrad to expand its operations in rural India with various programmes including upskilling the talent present there for job opportunities in the private sector.

Cumulatively, Exampur has a growing subscriber base of over 12 million with an average viewership of 2.5 million students and leads the Hindi-speaking markets across New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar. Most Exampur's paid users are in towns and smaller cities.