Online higher education platform UpGrad says it will invest Rs 100 crore in advertising and brand building activities in 2019 as it sets its eyes on signing up 5,000 students for its post graduate and professional skilling programmes this quarter.
The company has signed up Bollywood actor Vicky Kaushal as its brand ambassador with this regard as it targets audiences in the 25-35 age group. UpGrad says a large portion of its ad spend will go into running television ads, largely targeting viewers of news ahead of the upcoming elections.
“When you want to start market making, television becomes your anchor. We believe that our core audience watches television, but higher education is a family decision so it becomes incredibly important for us to be visible there,” said Ronnie Screwvala, co-founder of UpGrad.
The ads will begin airing from Monday, with the company opting for a cross-platform strategy of television ads along with digital as well. UpGrad says a lot of the audience it is targetting will be watching news due to the elections, apart from sporting events which will come up during the course of this quarter.
Advertising will help it break out of being a niche online education brand to one that is recognised by many people, Screwvala adds. The move comes at a time when UpGrad is looking at growing its annual revenue runrate which stands at Rs 200 crore to Rs 1,000 crore in the next two years.
A large portion of this growth will come from simply signing up more users. Upgrad so-far has trained 10,000 people over the past two years across various of its training programmes. Now, it plans to sign up half of that number in the first quarter itself. While it is also targeting specific programmes such as AI, ML, Data Science and more to woo corporates, it says majority of its revenue and learners will be individuals.
“The founder group had originally committed Rs 150 crore of capital of which we have used a significant amount already. Given this new campaign and growth potential, we’ve committed another Rs 100 crores, so there’s now around Rs 250 crore which has been put in by the founder group,” said Screwvala.
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