Byju’s-owned Aakash Educational Services to add 100 more centres in 2022

Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL), owned by edtech unicorn Byju's, is planning to add 100 more centres in 2022 across tier-3, 4 towns in the country. AESL currently has over 250 offline centres across India.

AESL was acquired by Byju’s earlier this year for $950 million, making it one of the largest VC deals in the start-up ecosystem in 2021.

In a statement, AESL Managing Director Aakash Chaudhry said that the 100 new centres will be added in tier-3, 4 cities as part of the company's offline expansion strategy. "As AESL is transforming into a hybrid edtech firm, our focus is to go closer to customers, leverage technology and physical centres and hire talent utilising the specialisations of Byju’s," Chaudhry added.

He said the education sector has witnessed massive disruption since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

"The year 2021 has been a watershed moment for e-learning and the edtech industry. Blended learning became the new normal with the reopening of educational institutions. The hallmark of the year was the edtech sector attracting the biggest fundraise with mergers and acquisitions worth more than $3.35 billion, more than three times the consolidated amounts raised in 2020 and 2019," he noted.

AESL provides test preparatory services for medical and engineering entrance exams, school/board exams, KVPY, NTSE, Olympiads, and other foundation level exams.

Byju’s had earlier announced that it will make further investments in AESL for its expansion. This, according to Byju's CEO and founder Byju Raveendran, is in line with the blended mode of learning that will become the new-normal.

Byju's aims to combine its content and tech capabilities with the test preparation domain of AESL.