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Prosus nabs another edutech firm in R35bn deal

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 15 Jun 2021

Prosus, a Naspers company, has added another edutech firm to its portfolio, acquiring a majority stake in GoodHabitz for R35 billion (€212 million).

GoodHabitz is a European provider of online training for businesses. Founded in 2011, it provides enterprise clients with a broad range of soft skills, delivering 150 courses available across eight languages.

The latest acquisition by the global technology investor comes two weeks after it bagged Stack Overflow, another edutech firm, in a R24 billion deal.

Edutech has become a key focus for the Naspers Group and it has been gunning for a bigger global market share of the sector.

In recent months, Naspers made a series of education technology-focused investments, including splashing millions of rands on Brainly and Udemy.

Today, commenting on the GoodHabitz acquisition, Larry Illg, CEO of Prosus Edtech, says: “If this past year has shown us anything, it is that technology can fundamentally change a sector and enable it to scale much quicker, and this is especially true in learning and education. The future of workplace learning is rapidly evolving and the companies that can engage their employees in a digital environment successfully will do well moving forward.

“There is a significant need across businesses of all sizes to offer their people engaging, easy-to-consume training. GoodHabitz has built a successful business delivering highly-polished but fun content that meets that need perfectly and we are looking forward to helping the team expand the business further as part of Prosus.”

Prosus says, since its founding, GoodHabitz has developed a strong enterprise client base in all market segments and has expanded from its original market in the Netherlands into nine further European markets and is one of the few profitable players in edtech in Europe.

With the Prosus takeover, GoodHabitz will continue to be led by founder and CEO Maarten Franken, says the company.

“We look forward to becoming part of the edtech powerhouse that Prosus is building. Companies around the world face big challenges effectively educating their workforces, particularly now with the explosion in home working over the last 15 months. We hope to accelerate our international growth working with the Prosus team, helping more customers build a workforce that is ready for the future through enabling more people to access online training,” says Franken.

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