HR solutions provider CIEL Group has acquired Mumbai-based upskilling startup Courseplay for an enterprise value of $2 million in a mix of cash and share swap.
As a part of the deal, the company will partly acquire Courseplay Founder Arjun Gupta’s stake along with the complete stake of the employee growth enablement platform’s largest external investor, Inflection Point Ventures. The company will set aside some shares for an ESOP pool.
Gupta will continue as the CEO of Courseplay. After the integration with CIEL HR, 30 employees of Courseplay will join CIEL HR’s Mumbai office.
Courseplay allows companies to capture data related to employee performance, behaviour, competencies, development goals, learning, and more to make automated recommendations for learning and growth activities. It had raised Rs 3 crore in January 2022 in seed funding from Inflection Point Ventures.
“We’re consciously proactively defining ourselves as a confederation of entrepreneurs where founders can spread their wings and fulfil their dreams,” said K Pandiarajan, Executive Chairman and Director of CIEL Group. He also heads Ma Foi Group and has served as the education and culture minister of the Tamil Nadu government.
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The HRtech company, which is aiming for an IPO in FY25, earlier raised around Rs 43 crore from high-networth individuals. It now aims to raise a pre-IPO institutional investment round from HDFC Bank and Ant Capital for organic as well as inorganic growth as part of its expansion roadmap.
In December 2022, the company had acquired talent assessment company, Jombay. It also acquired Chennai-based IT staffing company Aargee Staffing Services in December 2023.
CIEL Group expects its acquisitions to contribute 70% of its EBITDA and increase its revenue to Rs 1,100 crore in the current financial year.
Pandiarajan, along with CIEL Group co-founders Latha Rajan and Rajiv Krishnan, will transfer their remaining stake in Ma Foi Strategy and Ma Foi Education (later renamed as CIEL Skills) into the CIEL HR Group.
CIEL HR is a recruiting firm founded in 2015 and headquartered in Bengaluru, India. It offers a range of talent solutions including executive search, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), mid-level hiring, temp staffing, specialised staffing, and reskilling, among other services.
Edited by Kanishk Singh
