Superprof buys Italian rival in 19th acquisition, eyes €100M revenue
What's the deal? SuperprofDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the French platform connecting students with tutors, has acquired Ripetizioni.it — the number two player in Italy's online tutoring market. It is the company's 19th acquisition in 13 years. The deal was paid in cash and financed through a five-year bank loan; the exact amount was not disclosed.
Founded in 2013 and led by chief executive Wilfried Granier, Superprof now claims 38 million registered tutors worldwide across subjects ranging from academic support to languages, music, and sports. The company is targeting €100M in revenue this year.
Why now? The two companies have been circling each other for nearly eight years. "Italy was one of the first markets we opened. We had already tried to buy them very early on," Granier told Maddyness. Two earlier attempts fell through over valuation disagreements. This time, an investment bank mandated by Ripetizioni.it helped get the deal done.
What could go wrong? Superprof's playbook is aggressive: it shuts down the companies it buys. After the acquisition closes, Ripetizioni.it will be gradually wound down. Tutor and student profiles will be verified and migrated to Superprof.it, while traffic and marketing campaigns get redirected.
"We destroy the company we acquire — we don't keep the teams," Granier said. All operations are centralised in Paris around a single platform. The goal is to absorb traffic without losing any of it, but that migration carries real execution risk — particularly around retaining users who chose Ripetizioni.it for a reason.
The signal: Superprof's 19th acquisition underscores a distinctive growth model in European edtech — serial consolidation funded by debt rather than venture capital. Dealroom still classifies the company as "early growth," yet it is targeting €100M in revenue, suggesting a bootstrapped trajectory that has largely flown under the radar of traditional startup metrics. Its market-by-market rollup strategy mirrors consolidation plays seen in other European marketplace verticals, but the deliberate destruction of acquired brands is a high-stakes bet that platform gravity alone can retain migrated users.
Read more: maddyness.com
