The ed-tech whirlwind is over. Now, Ronnie Screwvala’s upGrad is nursing a Harvard dream.

After six years of bootstrapping upGrad into a formidable higher ed-tech company, serial entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala gave into the venture capital-driven growth model in 2021. By then, Byju’s had raised USD2.5 billion and Unacademy USD400 million. The pandemic-induced explosion in online learning had triggered a mad rush. Between Byju’s and Unacademy alone, USD1.7 billion was raised in just one year up to May 2021. Clearly, upGrad did not want