Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Global education company Pearson Plc.’s TutorVista and Edurite have officially been acquired by the Edu-Tech start-up Byju’s (Think and Learn Pvt. Ltd) for an undisclosed amount. The move is aimed at expanding reach to a global platform along with expanding offerings for students.

“This partnership will enhance our product offerings and give us access in some of the new markets when we launch our international products. We are excited to work with the talented and experienced team who will come on-board as a part of this acquisition,” says founder and chief executive at Byju’s, Byju Raveendran in a statement.

“With increased brand awareness, our core offering has witnessed massive adoption amongst students across grades (classes 4-12). We strongly believe that a product like ours can change the way students learn all across the world. Today, with a wider bandwidth, we have started creating similar products for the international markets that further boost our reach as well as product portfolio,” Raveendran continued.

Back in 2009, Pearson acquired 17% in Banglore’s TutorVista and progressively, in 2011 January, another 59% was acquired (For a massive Rs 577 cr deal. Within the same year, the acquisition increased from 76% to 80%. By February 2013, the remaining 20%of the company was also acquired. TutorVista is a successful website in the US, gathering about 70% traffic.

Comprising of four business segments, TutorVista has – online tutorials; digital content and information and communication technologies for schools; test preparation and offline coaching to students; and the management of K-12 schools.

In 2007, TutorVista, promoted by serial entrepreneurs K.Ganesh and Meena Ganesh, acquired Edurite. Presently, Edurite sells educational CDs and DVDs.

“Edurite and TutorVista are pioneer brands in their respective spaces and enjoy great customer goodwill. We are pleased that a leading online education company in India sees value in the Edurite and TutorVista businesses, brands and employees,” Deepak Mehrotra, MD at Pearson India.

Apart from the food tech start-up Swiggy (Bundl Technologies Pvt. Ltd.), Byju’s is one of those rare growth stage start-ups to have raised multiple rounds of funds in 2016.

In March 2016, the company managed raising about Rs 486 crore from Sequoia Capital and Belgian family office Sofina. In another round held by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in September that year,the company raised another Rs 324 crore (approx.) becoming  the first Asian investment for the personal fund set up by Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. The company raised Rs 97 crore (approx.) more in December 2016 from World Bank arm International Finance Corp.

Byju’s also raised an undisclosed amount in venture debt from InnoVen Capital. Lightspeed Venture Partners invested about Rs 129 crore in the firm earlier in 2016 in a secondary transaction which saw Aarin Capital partially selling its stake.

In summation, Byju’s raised a massive capital of about Rs 1035 crore in the last year alone. company, founded back in 2011 has raised Rs 1300 crore up till now in equity and debt funding since inception.

Byju’s provides learning programmes for class VI to XII students and preparation programmes for competitive examinations such as JEE, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT, among others. Byju’s plans to expand globally, especially in the US and UK, introduce new subjects beyond physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics as well as roll out products for classes IV and V, Raveendran said in an interview in September last year.

According to the company’s claims, there has already been more than 8 million app downloads and the company already has more than 400,000 paid customers. Raveendran had claimed in May that Byju’s clocked revenues of Rs260 crore last fiscal and will turn profitable in fiscal 2017-18.

“Primary and secondary supplemental education is expected to be the faster growing category in online education in India. This is a classic case of consolidation in an emerging market like India in the Internet business. With this acquisition, Byju’s will get two primary benefits, access to international markets like the US and UK through the current customers of TutorVista platform, as well as the access to the schools and students in India through the Edurite platform. The content and teaching mechanism popularized by Byju’s would thus get a powerful channel through Tutorvista to the international market. Further this acquisition can enhance the adoption of Byju’s way of content and teaching to the customers of both these companies,” said partner-Internet business at KPMG in India, Sreedhar Prasad.

India’s online education market is set to grow to about Rs 12688 crore and about 96 lakh users by 2021 from about Rs 1600 crore and about 16 lakh users in 2016, according to a report by KPMG and Google Inc released in May.

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By Rupal