Dear All,
I’ve been leading Urkund, and now Ouriginal, for almost two decades now. It has been a thrilling journey, during which we grew from a small Swedish company into a European leader with a global footprint, serving customers in more than 110 countries.
Over the last few years, changes in the EdTech landscape have been rapid in terms of competition, and also with regards to the changing needs and demands of our growing customer base. This development has been further fueled by the Coronavirus, and distance learning has now become the ‘new normal’ in many countries. Even if we all hope that things will go back to what they used to be in education and life before the pandemic, we do believe that the health crisis we’ve faced has opened the eyes of many to what is needed from a digital educational infrastructure perspective.
In the future, we foresee that these changes will require us to be both better and faster to keep up with these developments. We want to be able to serve you as a customer even better. For that we will need to be able to provide broader solutions to give your teachers and students the best tools that go even beyond traditional plagiarism detection, further enabling them to nurture future talent.
We have, together with our owners, evaluated the best way forward to be able to continue delivering on our product promises. In light of our very successful launch as a new brand in 2020 and the highly appreciated service we provide to our customers, Ouriginal’s current owners received interest from several parties seeking to partner with Ouriginal. I’m very happy to announce, that in March 2021, an agreement was signed with Turnitin LLC with the intention to divest Ouriginal to Turnitin.
Having worked with them side by side, (even though in different continents), for many years, I’ve always been impressed with how they developed from a pure plagiarism prevention company to one offering a broad range of services tackling different challenges in education. It is my true belief that together, we will be able to create even better products and services for a long time ahead – which will benefit you.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, and in the meantime, we continue with the plans we have for developing Ouriginal. We anticipate that the regulatory approval process might take months, and we will let you know as soon as anything changes. This means that even upon finalization of the acquisition, all of you will remain as Ouriginal’s customers with full access to our services, and your main contact person will be the same as usual.
My team and I will stay on board and are very committed to delivering an outstanding service to you, whether as an independent company or as a part of the Turnitin group!
Yours sincerely
Andreas Ohlson
CEO, Ouriginal Group AB
