'BYJU'S to acquire Aakash Educational Services for Rs 7,300 cr'

NEW DELHI: Leading edtech company BYJU'S is reportedly acquiring Delhi-based offline test preparatory services provider Aakash Educational Services for $ one billion (nearly Rs 7,300 crore), the media reported.


The deal may close in the next two-three months, reports Bloomberg.

An email sent to BYJU'S on Wednesday did not elicit any response.

BYJU'S last year acquired Mumbai-based live online coding provider WhiteHat Jr for roughly Rs 2,246 crore.

In September, barely a month later, the edtech platform raised $500 million (approximately Rs 3,689 crore) in a new funding round led by global technology investment firm Silver Lake.

Existing investors Tiger Global, General Atlantic and Owl Ventures also participated in the round, which put the edtech startup's valuation at $10.8 billion.

According to frest report, the founders of Aakash Educational Services would exit the company and its investor Blackstone will swap a portion of its 37.5 per cent stake for a stake in BYJU'S.

Aakash Educational Services provides test preparation services for medical and engineering entrance exams, school/board exams, and other exams via Aakash Centres.

BYJU'S informed in September that it saw over 20 million new students starting learning from its platform for free since the lockdown. The app then had over 64 million registered students and 4.2 million annual paid subscriptions.

The edtech platform doubled its revenue from Rs 1,430 crore to Rs 2,800 crore in the fiscal 2019-2020.

With a sudden spurt towards online education, the market size projections for Edtech in India by 2022 has seen a substantial increase.

As per a recent report, the Edtech market in India is projected to reach $3.5 billion by 2022 which was earlier projected to be in the range of $2.8 - $3.2 billion.

Edtech market size in 2019 stood at $735 million.

This growth is expected to be driven by K12, higher education, test preparation and upskilling.

"With more and more adoption towards Edtech and a different outlook for education in the post-Covid world, we can expect a bigger number than this," said Nasscom in its recent report.

Nearly five times growth in funding was observed in the first half of last year, compared to H12019.

Major portion of the funding is accounted by BYJU'S and Unacademy. Many new startups have also raised funding like iNurture, Masai, Campk12, Pedagogy, Lido and more.

Edtech firms like Udemy, BYJU'S, Coursera and Doubtnut saw a substantial rise in traffic share during the post-Covid world.

Sectors with Covid-19 tailwinds such as EdTech, BFSI, AgriTech, Gaming, etc., are witnessing a steady increase in the first time funding, up from 29 per cent in 2019 to 42 per cent in 2020, garnering a 14 per cent growth in absolute numbers.
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