Private equity investor KKR announced an agreement to acquire a majority stake in MasterD, a leading vocational training company in Spain. The investment marks the second in Europe for KKR’s Global Impact Fund following the firm’s acquisition of UK recycling and responsible waste management company Viridor earlier this year. MasterDs’s founder, Luis Gomez, and management team will reinvest alongside KKR. The firms did not disclose further details of the deal.

Launched in 2018, KKR announced the closing of its $1.3 billion Global Impact Fund early this year. With a team spread across the Americas, Europe and Asia, the fund targets companies that contribute progress towards one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while aiming to generate private equity risk-adjusted returns.

MasterD provides a proprietary online virtual learning platform, accessible to all students and professors, as well as in person and hybrid training available across 36 locations. Using these resources, the company offers over 280 courses to more than 50,000 learners annually in Spain and Portugal. The company’s services are geared to help support learners at all stages of their professional and educational development who want to improve their job or career prospects.

MasterD’s business directly contributes toward SDG #4 (Quality Education) and SDG #8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), providing vocational education and professional training, and helping to narrow the skills gap in Spain, while promoting equal and affordable access to education through offering flexible financing options to its students, significantly increasing the probability of employment.

Luis Gomez, Founder, and Antonio Mayoral Serrate, CEO of MasterD, said:

“We are delighted to welcome KKR as an investor and we know that they fully share our mission of helping learners across Iberia to gain qualifications and skills which will help them as they move through their careers. MasterD’s mission has always been to improve employability and bridging the skills gap to help support economic recovery has never been as vital as it is today. With KKR’s support we are excited to invest in helping even more people find success in the workplace.”

Stanislas de Joussineau, Director at KKR and Head of Global Impact in EMEA, said:

“MasterD is helping address a critical societal challenge in improving employability and skills, which aligns very strongly with the objectives of KKR’s strategy around impact investing. The outcomes delivered for learners and the improvement in their prospects are testament to the quality of the courses and the platform that the founder and management have built. We are very excited to work alongside a strong management team to accelerate the growth of MasterD and the feedback we gather will allow us to track and measure the benefits delivered for the students and on employment.”