Zaltbommel, The Netherlands-based Archipel Academy, an online learning experience platform that teaches in-demand business skills to employees and university students, announced on Wednesday that it has raised €13M in a fresh round of funding from Pride Capital Partners.
Archipel Academy also announced the acquisition of Eindhoven-based Edubookers, a booking platform for training. With this, Archipel aims to become the leading European platform in the field of training and education.
Lars van’t Hoenderdaal, Managing Partner at Pride Capital, says, “Archipel Academy has developed a scalable product that completely unburdens international organisations from arranging courses and training for their employees. We, as Pride Capital Partners, look forward to supporting the management team of Archipel in realising their growth plans and further adding strategic acquisition targets to the group.”
Capital utilisation
Archipel Academy says that the funds will be used for both organic growth and a buy-and-build strategy. With this strategy, the company targets the European market, including Germany, France and the UK.
Founder and CEO of Archipel, Omar Zakaria Fouab, says, “The growth budget and the acquisition of Edubookers will help us to serve our combined customers even better, by offering greater economies of scale, among other things. In addition, this step brings us closer to our goal of creating a European marketplace, in which we unlock the best educators from all over Europe.”
Acquisition of Edubookers
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Edubookers developed into a successful mediation platform for students and trainers.
Founded in 2015 by Paul Schrama, Edubookers is a booking platform that enables users to search for training, courses, and books directly. Users can compare more than 70,000+ training courses, education, webinars, and in-company training courses at more than 1,000 trainers in the Netherlands.
The acquisition will enable Archipel to offer the catalogue at the European level at the end of this year. Edubookers will continue to exist and will focus more under the same name on LLO platforms (Lifelong Development) and The Learning Account.
Paul Schrama says, “The corona pandemic has made it clear that Lifelong Development is crucial for Dutch companies and citizens. More and more initiatives are being developed both by governments and in collective labour agreements to encourage this. Within this, an important focus is placed on individual learning budgets. Edubookers gives substance to this with various LLO platforms and the Learning Account. In order to expand our leading position in this area, we have found the desired partner in Archipel.”
About Archipel Academy
Archipel originated from a different view of learning and development. Starting out as learning consultants, the company noticed a tendency that hindered clients from deploying an effective learning environment. More and more challenges are forcing organisations to change faster. Learning and development did not offer a solution at the time.
The company says “We asked ourselves: How do we get organisations to learn differently, without the many bumps they experience? And how do we make learning and development not only flexible & effective but also really future-proof? Archipel as an all-in-one learning platform was born from these questions. One solution for all these challenges.”
The Dutch edtech platform offers all tools and services in one to help organisations with employee training courses. The platform also provides access to more than 2,000 trainers and 70,000 training courses.
Development through the learning account
Archipel Academy has its origins within Schouten & Nelissen but has been completely independent since 2020. The platform has since grown from 8 to a team of over 120 employees, with clients such as Heineken, VodafoneZiggo, Philips and Unilever.
In 2021 Archipel Academy took over the learning services branch of ‘Conclusion Learning Centers’ from Conclusion.
Archipel’s services now consist of an AI-driven learning platform, which allows employees to grow in a targeted manner, and Learning Services, which offers organisations the opportunity to manage learning processes.
The company’s Learning Consultancy section offers individualised learning guidance and activation initiatives. Expanding the product and growing the platform are two of Archipel’s growth strategies. In addition, the firm is developing its unique ‘Unlimited learning’ concept, which will allow users to access learning programmes and examinations at any time.
