Byju's to acquire Aakash Educational Services for $1 billion

Byju's has apparently secured a deal for acquiring Blackstone backed Aakash Educational Services Ltd for $1 billion. India's largest online-education startup Byju's is valued at $12 billion and it has been looking at expanding as demand of online classes peaked during the pandemic.

This deal will be one of the largest edtech acquisitions in the world. The deal will be sealed in two or three months according to Bloomberg.

Aakash Institutes with more than 200 physical centres across the country tutors students to gain entry into India's elite engineering and medical schools. These institutes have over 2,50,000 students.

Post the pandemic, offline or physical learning centres including schools and coaching institutes have taken a hit, while online classes have thrived.

According to the Bloomberg report, the Chaudhry family, founders of Aakash will completely exit while Blackstone will swap a portion of its 37.5% equity in Aakash for Byju's stake.

Bangalore-based Byju's was founded by Byju Raveendran in 2011. In August 2015, after 4 years of developments, the firm launched Byju's: The Learning App. The Byju's app caters to students from kindergarten to the 12th grade.

India has about 250 million students in the K-12 grades. The app provides lessons in math and science through video animations and games.

More than 70 million users logged in from over 1,700 cities around the country, Byju's said last September when it announced a fundraiser. Of these, over 4.5 million are paid users. It's targeting doubling its revenues to $1 billion in the current financial year ending in March 2021.

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