Byju’s, a digital learning platform, has purchased Great Learning, a higher education platform, and Toppr, after-school learning software. According to media sources and regulatory filings, Byju’s invested $600 million to acquire Great Learning and $150 million to acquire Toppr. The news comes less than a week after it purchased Epi, a children’s online reading company based in the United States.
Byju’s purchased Aakash Educational Services Ltd for $1 billion in April of this year. With the acquisition of Great Learning, the edtech company will join the upskilling and reskilling market. According to media sources, this will also broaden the company’s product line. Great Learning collaborates with renowned universities across the world to offer higher learning degree, diploma, and certificate programmes in fields including data science, digital marketing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. With these two new acquisitions, Byju’s will have purchased six startups in India and the United States in 2021.
In the year 2021 alone, the Edtech Corporation will have spent roughly $2 billion on purchasing startups in the field of education and learning technologies. According to sources, Byju’s wants to integrate its technology with Great Learning’s professional courses in areas such as cloud computing.
Byju’s acquisitions of companies that provide similar services to its own will expand its offers, particularly in light of the increased need for online education during Coronavirus-related lockdowns.
According to media sources, Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO of Byju’s, said during a video chat, “We are taking a chance to develop a very huge edtech firm for the world.”
He was also cited as saying, “India’s edtech entrepreneurs have a big competitive advantage to conquer the global market.” The founders of Great Learning, Mohan Lakhamraju, Hari Nair, and Arjun Nair, will stay on and run the company as a separate entity. According to media sources citing Mr Lakhamraju, Great Learning intends to increase its yearly subscription revenue from $100 million to $1 billion “within the following years.”
In contrast to “conventional learning in colleges,” Great Learning’s courses are geared at tackling real-world challenges through a practical approach. Epic, a digital reading platform for youngsters, was acquired by Byju’s last week for $500 million, which is almost Rs 3,700 crore.
