Edtech firm upGrad Education, which entered the Unicorn club earlier this year, is looking at an initial public offering (IPO) over the next 18-24 months, a senior executive said.

“Not having diluted much early on gave us a lot of flexibility to stick to our conviction and strategy on not getting distracted by what others (investors) ask us to do,” Ronnie Screwvala, chairman and co-founder of upGrad said.

“You don’t need billions of dollars to create a category-defining business like ours. For me personally, having been on both sides, of being an acquirer and a company that was acquired, I have come to realise ROCE (return on capital employed) is all that matters” he said. “We might look to raise one or two more rounds before we go for an IPO,” Screwvala added.

The company has no immediate plans to raise capital even as it is seeing inbound interest from funds, Screwvala said. “I don’t want the company to list as small-cap or a mid-cap stock and hence I want it to reach a critical mass before we go public,” Screwvala said.

Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli founded upGrad in 2015 which provides mid-career upskilling courses and higher education for people between 18 and 50.

“We expect the user base at upGrad in the age group we operate in the 18-50 years to grow to 10 million by FY23,” he said.

This growth, says Srewvala, will come from overseas expansion, its integrated offering across segments, newer products within each segment and through tie-ups with more universities as also ownership of universities around the world.

“We want to be a dominant player in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Currently, the overseas business contributes around 10 per cent of the total revenues, which we expect to be around 50-50 in the next 24 months,” he added.