Business

Mentorama, an edtech focused on digital professions, merges with Russian Skillbox

The deal brings together the Brazilian edtech company with the Russian holding aiming to expand the group across Latin America

LABS

04.Nov.2021 09:00 BRT

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Mentorama, a Brazilian online school focused on digital professions, announced this Thursday (4) the merger with Russian Skillbox Holding Limited, a Russian educational platform whose major shareholder is VK, a giant in the country’s Information Technology industry. The terms of the deal were not disclose.

With the merger, Mentorama becomes the first Brazilian edtech to join Skillbox Holding, teaming up with other startups from the group, such as GeekBrains and SkillFactory.

The merger comes at a time of a booming edtech sector in Latin America. In Brazil, the growing demand for online teaching solutions has resulted in two trends: the rise of investments in edtechs – education startups have received $222.5 million in investments in the first quarter this year, an increase of 770% compared to last year –, and the emergence of a few dozen edtechs (almost 400, according to research by Liga Ventures in partnership with Qconcursos and consulting firm PwC). In this scenario, the edtechs specialized in training for the IT area and digital professions stand out.

Eyeing the potential of this market, Russian Anton Vinogradov, who also participated in the launch of Skillbox in 2016, founded Mentorama in May 2020. The edtech offers training courses in a non-synchronous teaching mode and, with the merger, hopes to expand the offer to students from other countries in the region.

Mentorama’s portfolio currently includes about 50 courses for professions in the areas of design, marketing, coding, and gaming. The platform makes available more than 700 hours of educational content in Portuguese.

In Skillbox’s vision, the merger with Mentorama is the entry to the Latin American market and part of the holding company’s global expansion strategy. “Skillbox’s experience and infrastructure have reached a high enough level that we can enter extremely promising markets such as Latin America, starting with Brazil,” said Dmitry Krutov, founder and CEO of Skillbox.