EdCast Acquires Sales University for Corporate Training Boost
(Photo: Wilfred Iven, Creative Commons)
EdCast Inc. has acquired the educational app creator Sales University, which was originally known as WAGmob, in a bid to bolster its market share in the corporate education space.
The nontraditional online learning platform EdCast Inc. hopes to expand into a new corporate training market with the acquisition of the sales training app Sales-University.
The amount for which they purchased the app remained undisclosed.
Sales University was founded as WAGmob in 2010, reports Aparna Mishra of Inc42. Its founders and current leaders, Kalpit Jain and Kavita Jain, left their engineering careers at Microsoft to go to Madhya Pradesh, India and begin the company. Now, it is based in Seattle and its home base in India is in Indore.
Their original mission was to create consumer-focused education apps, but they evolved into a sales training company. Now, they work with names like Google, Samsung, Snapdeal, and other Fortune 500 companies. They have produced over 300 apps and have reached 4 million users.
According to Shashwati Shankar of the Economic Times of India, Sales University sets itself apart with features like live role-playing to help users practice sales skills, along with “smart buy.” According to Kalpit Jain’s definition:
Smart buy is a feature that can provide immediate snippets of knowledge within specific domains or sectors, from interactions with influencers and data screening.
The online learning platform that purchased Sales University, EdCast, was founded in 2013 by Karl Mehta. He designed a knowledge network that included short daily and contextual insights, called SmartBites, along with live access to experts. According to Business Wire, they focus on informal learning and creating lifelong learners, even as they serve the needs of companies and other organizations.
Individual users can follow pre-existing channels in topics relevant to their interests, and then receive SmartBites that they can engage with during short periods of free time over the course of the day. Comparisons can be made to Twitter because bite-sized information is provided on a newsfeed-style homepage, but EdCast is more thorough and in-depth.
When asked about the acquisition, Mehta said:
Access to curated and personalized knowledge based on the roles and job function is the new competitive advantage in the rapidly changing knowledge economy. Sales-University is the leading innovator in the Sales training category and we are excited to have their platform, customers, and team to join the EdCast Knowledge Network.
In April of this year, EdCast raised $ 16 million in series B funding from G.E. Asset Management, SoftBank Capital, Cervin Ventures, Stanford StartX Fund, and Penta Global.
The company plans to expand into training in other areas; particularly, they want to help train healthcare professionals.
Other similar startups include MasterClass, Degreed, HotChalk, Udacity, and Coursera.
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