Archipel Academy and Pride Capital Partners join forces and start buy-and-build strategy with the acquisition of Edubookers

Pride Capital Partners and Archipel Academy, the online B2B marketplace for courses, trainings, personal development trajectories and accompanying learning services, have joined forces and realize the acquisition of online training platform Edubookers. Pride Capital Partners acquired a minority shareholding in the company and provided capital for the acquisition. The strategic partnership with Pride Capital Partners and the acquisition of Edubookers result in Archipel Academy being ideally positioned to become the leading European B2B booking platform for trainings and courses.

Archipel Academy is headquartered in Zaltbommel and offers a B2B marketplace for booking trainings, courses and associated learning services in a strong recurring business model. The company completely unburdens enterprise clients in offering trainings and courses to their employees. The online platform, the vast content offered and being able to offer clients unlimited trainings and courses makes Archipel Academy a scalable business.

The company started as a subsidiary of Schouten & Nelissen, one of the largest training institutes of The Netherlands. In 2019, Archipel was carved-out from Schouten& Nelissen and continued to operate independently. The company managed to acquire an impressive portfolio of enterprise clients active in a variety of industries, including business and financial services, healthcare, construction and public sector. In 2021, Archipel Academy acquired the learning services activities of Conclusion ‘Conclusion Learning Center’. The coming years will be marked by both autonomous growth as a further roll-out of the buy-and-build strategy. The autonomous growth plans comprise optimizing the current commercial proposition, expanding the content offering and further developing the platform. Pride Capital Partners looks forward to support Archipel Academy in realizing its growth ambitions both financially and strategically.

Omar Fouab, CEO of Archipel Academy:
"The growth budget and acquisition of Edubookers will help us serve our combined clients 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 with access to the best trainers in all of Europe,"

Lars van ’t Hoenderdaal, Managing Partner Pride Capital Partners:
“Archipel Academy developed a scalable product that complete unburdens international organizations from arranging courses and trainings for their employees. The unique proposition of Archipel translates into short sales cycles and happy customers. We, as Pride Capital Partners, look forward to supporting the management team of Archipel Academy in realizing their growth plans and further add strategic acquisition targets to the group.”

About Pride Capital Partners

Pride Capital Partners supports and invests in profitable and growing businesses in the Software and IT industry. By combining private debt and equity, Pride Capital Partners enables software and IT entrepreneurs in realizing their growth ambitions. Typical scenarios include growth, acquisitions and management buy-out (MBO) transactions. The focus is on Benelux, DACH-region and Nordic companies. Pride Capital Partners has offices in Amsterdam and Cologne.

The funding of Pride Capital Partners is provided by its own shareholders, institutional investors, wealthy individuals, family offices and (former) entrepreneurs. The portfolio includes Blue Field Agency, The Valley, Spotzer Digital, Fivespark, Fairbanks, Netaxis en and ScanmarQED, and DACH-companies Wagawin, GBC Gruppe, Architrave, Kendox, moveXM, eKomi and Link 11.