Harappa Education, which was acquired by edtech unicorn upGrad in July for Rs 300 crore, is going global. One of its key offerings — the Accelerated Management Programme (AMP) — under the Harappa School of Leadership, will be launched in the US, and later in the UK. In an exclusive conversation with Business Today, Harappa Founder and Chairman Pramath Raj Sinha, said, “We are bullish about the US market and the UK as well. Many of our programmes are already being consumed by people around the world. Several [Indian] companies we work with offer our courses to their employees abroad. Now, we are going directly to companies in the US.” Harappa plans to take the B2B route for its US foray, given the growing demand for professional courses and enterprise learning. Programmes under the Harappa School of Leadership (HSoL) will focus primarily on new-age technical skills like data analytics, product management, design thinking, etc. as well as soft skills like leadership and empathy, the need for which has surged in a post-pandemic world. Besides AMP, which offers over 200 hours of live learning modules, the Delhi-based start-up also plans to launch courses on women leadership and other behavioral skills over the next few months. Earlier in September, upGrad pumped in an additional $40 million (Rs 320 crore) into Harappa to aid its global expansion. Harappa, founded in 2018 by Sinha (who’s also the Founding Dean at the Indian School of Business) and Shreyasi Singh, has grown to 600,000 learners on its platform across B2B and B2C segments. Nearly 70 per cent of these users were acquired in the last 12 months. “We’ve grown our topline 3X to about Rs 75 crore this year, and are close to profitability,” Sinha shares. “We’re the only player in India that is genuinely focused on creating its own content rather than distributing others' products. We see Harappa as another institution we’re building with our own faculty and curriculum,” he adds. On the B2C side, Harappa’s ARPU ranges between Rs 999 for self-paced learning courses to Rs 2.5 lakh for the Accelerated Management Programme. On the B2B side, which drives a larger chunk of Harappa’s revenues, ARPUs go up to Rs 10,000 to Rs 1 lakh. “In our enterprise business, we have an average feedback rating of 4.5/5 on delivery-related parameters, and completion rates of more than 80 per cent,” the company said in a statement to Business Today. What separates Harappa from the bevy of higher education startups in India right now? Sinha elaborates, “While management education was mostly about the technical aspects and the hard skills, people were not investing in the leadership part. It is difficult to build these soft skills… how do you think better, collaborate better, solve problems, manage people, etc. these were the areas in which we created courses.” “We took the approach of going to corporates and partnering with them in the workplace. We bet on something that was difficult and others were not doing, and we’re trying to do it at scale,” he adds. India’s online higher education market is poised to grow to $5 billion by 2025, according to a report by consulting firm RedSeer. The segment is said to be the fastest-growing in the edtech sector. The market for online lifelong learning is also expected to expand, stated the report. Also Read: upGrad acquires Exampur, a test-prep platform for govt jobs Also Read: Edtech unicorn Unacademy inching towards profitability, aims to break-even in January 2023