Sales people worldwide use this app, and it just got acquired

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Kalpit and Kavita Jain are a couple from Indore, a town in central India. They’re both computer engineers and went to work for Microsoft in Seattle.

In 2011, they came back home and launched a startup called Wagmob to build education apps. This evolved into a sales training portal for users around the world, shifted its base to Seattle, and got renamed as Sales University. They developed curriculum for individual sales professionals as well companies with a sales force.

Sales University calls itself “a different kind of professional development consultancy.” Its operations continued to run from Indore, however, and last year it got into the Microsoft Ventures accelerator in Bangalore. Today it announced acquisition by California-based EdCast, capping a remarkable journey for a startup from Indore.

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Going global from a tier-2 city

“Wagmob was an interesting company for Microsoft Ventures as it had an India backend – that too in a tier-2 city – and a global market,” says Ravi Narayan, director of Microsoft Ventures, who mentored the startup. Wagmob’s tech backend was based in Indore.

It had already tapped world-class trainers for sales professionals worldwide. Microsoft Ventures helped it with global expansion and building enterprise-grade technology. Sales University today counts large enterprises like Google, Samsung, and Snapdeal among its clients. More than 100,000 sales professionals worldwide use the app.

EdCast has been focusing on knowledge solutions for enterprises, and Sales University fits right into its scheme of things. “We are thrilled to be part of this fast-growing market leader in an exciting space that can help the digital transformation of enterprises worldwide,” says Kalpit Jain. “Microsoft Ventures has been an invaluable partner in scaling our growth through its Azure cloud and partner ecosystem.”

EdCast was founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur Karl Mehta. It raised series A investment of US$6 million from SoftBank in 2014, and a US$16 million series B round from GE Asset Management in April this year. The terms of its acquisition of Sales University were not disclosed.

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