The addition “Flix” indicates success and digital: Netflix is the most successful streaming service in the world, Flixbus is a large bus operator that is now expanding worldwide. Not least because of this, the two founders of a web platform for pupils and students chose the name Studyflix five years ago. Among other things, free learning videos for pupils and students as well as career tips are offered. The whole thing is financed with advertising, for example by companies that want to be attractive to future employees. According to Studyflix, it now has six million monthly active users.
Now the Gütersloh-based media group Bertelsmann is taking over the start-up from Augsburg, according to rough estimates, for around 50 million euros, but there is no information. “With this acquisition, we have Generation Z in mind,” says Carsten Coesfeld, head of Bertelsmann Investments, the division that invests in young companies for the group. “The battle for talent starts earlier and earlier, now at school,” he says. That is why contact with young people is crucial, and the target group is particularly attractive.
The end result could be a kind of Linkedin, i.e. a professional platform, for young people in particular. Gen Z refers to people born between 1997 and 2012 who will be entering the labor market in the coming years. Bertelsmann is currently targeting older customer groups with RTL, Penguin Random House (books), BMG (music) and Arvato (services).
Carsten Coesfeld heads the Bertelsmann investment company.
(Photo: Sebastian Pfütze)
In any case, Coesfeld has high hopes for this area. Bertelsmann already operates Bildungs.de, MeinPraktikum.de and Trainee.de – together with Studyflix, the offers will have nine million users in the future. He estimates the entire target group in Germany, Switzerland and Austria at 15 million students and schoolchildren. “The market as a whole has a volume of around one billion euros and it’s growing at double-digit rates,” says Coesfeld. Bertelsmann will stick to the Studyflix brand, and the two founders and the workforce will also remain on board. “Studyflix’s business has at least doubled every year for the past few years, and it’s very profitable,” reports Coesfeld. He wants to make the business really big: “We will make further acquisitions. For us, the topic of personnel marketing has the potential to become a separate division in the group.”
Coesfeld has headed the Bertelsmann Investments division since last year. Since the beginning of the month, his brother Thomas has been head of the BMG music division and successor to Hartwig Masuch. Carsten and Thomas Coesfeld are grandsons of the company patriarch Reinhard Mohn (1921-2009). The two are considered to be great hopes for Bertelsmann, and they are also given opportunities to become CEO, which Thomas Rabe currently holds. The Bertelsmann shares belong to the family and foundations. The purchase of Studyflix is the largest transaction that Carsten Coesfeld has made to date. has.