Symplicity Corp., a higher education career and student services platform backed by private equity, said it's bought a similar company based in Canada — its third international acquisition in the past five years.
The local company, owned by Miami-based H.I.G. Capital since 2016, has acquired Orbis Communications for undisclosed terms, helping stretch its international presence even further. Before the deal, it counted more than 2,000 colleges and universities using its technology in 35 countries, and it said Orbis adds access to another 100 schools, 350,000 employers and 1 million students.
Symplicity builds a platform for higher education institutions and employers to help gauge and engage with students and potential hires, saying it's helped with more than 450,000 internship placements and processed 10 million job applications in the last 12 months. Orbis, based in Hamilton, Ontario, also helps students, employers and colleges with job searches and placements.
The two companies have similar platforms, but their capacities will “supplement each other,” Symplicity CEO and President Matthew Small said in an interview. “It’s very powerful. There’s lots of economies of scale.”
After the acquisition, the local company will retain all 40 Orbis employees, as well as its client base, Small said. Its clients include the universities of Victoria, Alberta and Waterloo, as well as Michigan State University in the U.S., per its website.
He said the company will maintain its current headquarters at 3003 Washington Blvd. in Clarendon — and will be hiring. Symplicity now employs about 300 people, around 200 of whom had already been working remotely before the pandemic. Although Orbis employees will remain based in Canada, Small said, “there are going to be a lot of growth opportunities globally.”
Already, Symplicity is growing "by leaps and bounds," Small said, declining to share revenue figures. The company has come off of two similar acquisitions of career prep, skills development and online portal platforms — of CareerHub of Brisbane, Australia, in 2017 and Contratanet of Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 2018.
Small was brought on, in part, for his M&A expertise in September 2016, about a month after Symplicity sold to H.I.G. Capital for an undisclosed amount. At the time, Small came from Blackboard Inc., where he had served as chief business officer and president of its international business and helped that company make upward of 15 acquisitions. Since he came on board, Symplicity opened a London office in 2017 and has linked with partners to push its services from South Africa to Mexico to Asia before promoting Thomas Jepsen, another Blackboard alum, in January to the role of president of its international business, reporting to Small.
Symplicity is highly profitable today, said Small, who attributed its success in part to its growing focus on student services and, in particular, career services.
"I would say that 10 years ago, when you asked the leaders of higher education what their most important strategic initiatives were, they wouldn’t even mention employability," he said. "And today, if you poll directors, presidents and provosts, it’s the No. 1 thing that they’re focused on."
The company, like many others in the ed-tech field, are benefiting from an accelerated need for online education services through the pandemic. Last month Lanham’s 2U Inc. (NASDAQ: TWOU) acquired nearly all of edX’s assets in an $800 million deal. And Full Measure Education, a D.C. ed-tech startup from yet another fellow Blackboard veteran Greg Davies, recently raised $10 million to build out its online platform to help students navigate some of the college experience, from admissions to campus tours to extracurricular activities, from their phones. Aneta Ed is another startup, based in Cheverly, that's helping families and schools with online K-12 education, while Blackboard co-founder Michael Chasen has raised big sums for his latest ed-tech venture, Class Technologies Inc., a Zoom-like platform for online learning.
Blackboard, meanwhile, merged with another higher education software company, Anthology, to up its scale in an increasingly competitive ed-tech market. That deal closed in October, and it was announced the parent company is Anthology, with Blackboard continuing as a brand within the company. The company will retain the former Blackboard office in Reston but its headquarters will be in Boca Raton, Florida.
