The closed doors of schools in the pandemic are the tailwind behind the EdTech sector and Byjus aspires to become the undisputed leader of it. According to RBSA Advisors Byjus is gearing to become the largest decacorn EdTech start-up worth $30 billion in 10 years. The recent infusion of funds worth $340 million from investors such as the UBS Group, Zoom founder Eric Yuan, Blackstone, Abu Dhabi sovereign fund ADQ, and Phoenix Rising-Beacon Holdings has increased its valuation upto $16.5 billion surpassing Paytm and inching closer to its ambitious plan of raising a total of $ 1.5 billion in 2021. In 2020, Byjus alone raised a lion’s share of $1 billion from the total funding of $2.2 billion in the EdTech sector, as per Venture Intelligence Data. After attracting a huge volume of investments, this begs a question: how is Byjus eyeing to own a larger pie of the EdTech sector?
Acquisitions and the International Market Dream
Byjus online learning quickly shifted its gears from personalised learning to gain foothold in online school classrooms and online tutoring platforms etc. by acquiring Vidyartha, TutorVista, and Edurite. Byjus made these acquisitions keeping in mind to launch new product offerings in online learning solutions to schools through Vidyartha and gain access to the international market leveraging the user base of Tutorvista.
Its acquisition spree did not end there. The year 2020 witnessed the biggest offline tutorial chain Aakash Educational Services getting acquired by Byjus in a deal worth $1billion to strengthen its presence in the engineering and medical entrance exam segment.
WhiteHat Jr an online coding platform for kids is perhaps the first start-up that caught Byjus attention within 20 months of its launch in 2020. The platform will soon launch music, science, and English also creating native courses for the mobile. 70 percent of WhiteHat Jr.’s revenue comes from countries UK and USA. Therefore, holding on to Whitehat Jr expansive reach in international markets, Byjus is launching Byju’s Future School, an online live one-on-one learning platform for coding and mathematics for the USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico markets.To tap the kid’s age group of 3-8 years in the US market, Byjus has acquired Osmo – a US-based educational games maker which will offer learning solutions in the US market by leveraging its physical-to-digital technology and content.
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According to RBSA Advisors Byjus is gearing to become the largest decacorn EdTech start-up worth $30 billion in 10 years.
What does this mean for Byjus and India?
With the acquisition of several international and national medium-sized EdTech companies and offline tutorial chains, it can be inferred that Byjus does not want to keep any segment of the educational sector untapped nationally and internationally thus creating a high barrier for the new entrants. Right from kindergarten to high school to competitive exams, Byju wants to gain a strong foothold in the national and international markets. To penetrate deeper into India’s semi-urban cities, it plans to introduce subjects in vernacular languages, with a new mentoring programme where every student will have a dedicated mentor. The new mentoring programme will effectively assist in student’s doubt-solving.
India’s Edtech Curve?
In the absence of chalks and blackboards, learning online seems to be the only viable option for students. Though EdTech cannot replace classrooms, the online classes from Byjus will offer a gamified approach in learning, therefore, helping students to grasp each concept. The lines of online and offline learning will be blended and create an efficient educational system.
