upGrad, India’s largest online higher education company, in a move to strengthen its penetration into the international markets, announced the appointment of Saranjit Sangar as the CEO - UK, Europe, and the Middle East.
Saranjit is an experienced leader with a diverse international career across e-commerce (Amazon, UK), last-mile logistics (Amazon, UK, and Honestbee, Singapore), cloud kitchens (Grab, Singapore) & FMCG (Godrej, India). She has a successful track record of building and scaling businesses, growing teams, and creating value for customers and partners for over a decade. In her last role as Director - Grab Ventures and New Businesses at Grab, South East Asia’s first decacorn leader in ride-hailing, on-demand deliveries, and payments, she has been instrumental in building Grab’s cloud kitchens in Thailand, Singapore from the ground up while defining the country targets, building the organisation structure & owning the entire P&L.
On welcoming the new leader at the helm of its UK, Europe, and Middle East business, Ronnie Screwvala, Co-Founder & Chairman, upGrad, said, “upGrad's international expansion is a multi-pronged strategy. While last year we saw good traction for our existing programs from the large 40 million South Asian diasporas, we are now focused on leveraging our global tech platform, our strong wireframe model of deep learning, high-touch counseling in the digital world to replicate our success in these very large and interesting markets.”
“Our goal was always to be a strong international edtech company and this is one step closer to achieving it. I welcome Saranjit whose passion for tech and building a consumer business resonates with upGrad’s vision of impacting a billion working professionals with lifelong learning,” he added.
In her new role, Saranjit Sangar said, “In my personal experience, I have immensely valued and benefited from my education, guidance from my mentors, and their advice on continuous learning and self-improvement. But I also understand that these invaluable resources are not widely accessible to everyone. I want to help create a level playing field for the aspiring youth and professionals by democratizing education and making these resources available, to help them make the right choices through their careers.”
“At upGrad, we will now be providing internationally, a) relevant programs to prepare them for the future of the workforce b) immersive learning experience with real-life work simulations c) mentors and counselors who are industry experts d) career services - matching the skills-sets of our students, and helping them achieve meaningful outcomes. And I am thrilled to be embarking on this mission with upGrad,” she further stated.
Saranjit joins her new role from 1st October 2020 and will be based out of London UK.
Ronnie Screwvala concluded, “In line with our growth agenda to establish upGrad as the global leader in the Lifelong Learning space, we're setting up our subsidiaries in the international markets. We will soon announce the appointment of our CEO – APAC.”
