Winter Capital Partners Train Eyes on Creators' Economy, Acquire Stake in GetCourse
Winter Capital Partners has acquired a stake in the SaaS online learning platform GetCourse alongside other investors — Baring Vostok and Goldman Sachs.
GetCourse allows its clients to create, deliver, promote and sell their own educational content. More than 20,000 schools, trainers, coaches and bloggers use the service to establish and manage their online businesses. Not only does GetCourse give its users the opportunity to run educational projects by selling pre-recorded or real-time lessons; it also helps them solve the related lead-generation tasks (website creation, customer acquisition, mailing lists, etc.) while offering built-in customer relationship management (CRM) and analytics tools. The service is integrated with payment systems and popular social networks. GetCourse had a GMV of USD0.6bn in 2020; this number is expected to reach more than USD1bn in 2021, putting GetCourse on par with global leaders Kajabi (annualized GMV of $ 1.5bn in May 2021) and Thinkific (2020 GMV of $ 0.3bn). GetCourse is a prominent member of the global "creators economy", which makes it possible for creative entrepreneurs to make a living through direct support from the people they serve, helping these entrepreneurs to directly monetize their knowledge and skills via online projects. The "creators economy" segment has grown rapidly over the past five years, gaining much momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, amid an increasing demand for remote learning.
About GetCourse
GetCourse is a SaaS platform that helps creators, influencers and educators to conduct seminars, training courses and other educational projects. The company was founded in 2014. The platform combines a set of functional modules for creating online courses, building websites and marketing and selling content, as well as mailing services and end-to-end analytics tools. In addition to the platform, GetCourse offers its own educational projects. The company has flexible pricing for clients with varying subscriber volumes and turnovers.
About Winter Capital Partners (WCP) Investment Funds
Winter Capital Partners has been an active investor in knowledge-economy companies. Last year, Winter Capital became a shareholder of Udemy (the largest global marketplace for asynchronized courses), Skyeng (the largest online educational platform in Eastern Europe) and Algorithmics (a coding school with a presence in 48 countries). With total assets under management exceeding $ 1 billion, WCP focus on growth investments globally. The funds invest in fast-growing technology companies in a number of selected verticals: healthcare, education, financial and consumer services.
About Baring Vostok Funds
Baring Vostok is a leading private equity fund focusing primarily on the Russian and CIS markets. Long-term investors in Baring Vostok include pension and university funds, sovereign wealth funds, as well as funds of funds from North America, Western Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Over its 27 years in the market, Baring Vostok funds have invested more than USD 3.7 billion in 87 projects in Russia, the CIS and other countries in the region. Baring Vostok is a well-established investor in leading tech, fintech and knowledge economy companies, including SkyEng, Ozon (Russia's largest e-commerce marketplace), Kaspi (Kazakhstan's largest fintech company), ivi (a leading Russian video streaming company), Level. Travel (a Russian traveltech platform) and many others. Its funds' portfolio companies also include first-class Russian companies with leading positions in Russia and abroad, including OZON, Familia, VkusVill, Papa John’s, Solofarm, Viasat and many others.
About Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global financial institution that delivers a broad range of financial services across investment banking, securities, investment management and consumer banking to a large and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and individuals. Founded in 1869, the firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world.
