Byju's acquires coding site Tynker to accelerate US expansion

Edtech giant Byju's announced on Thursday that it has acquired Tynker, a leading US-based K-12 creative coding platform, in order to accelerate its US market expansion. Byju's has not disclosed the exact details of the acquisition.

This acquisition is expected to enable Tynker to introduce its creative coding platform to even more kids, educators, schools and coding camps globally. The firm's creative coding platform has been used by over 60 million kids and 100,000 schools in 150 countries. Tynker co-founders Krishna Vedati, Srinivas Mandyam and Kelvin Chong will remain in their roles, noted Byju's in an official statement.

"Joining forces with Tynker will unlock the ability for us to bring imagination to life for hundreds of millions of students through coding," said Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO, Byju's.

"Our goal is to ignite a love for programming in children globally and we feel strongly that Tynker's creative coding platform and approach to making programming fun and intuitive for kids will get us there even faster," he added.

This acquisition will enable Byju's to expand its US footprint by providing access to the more than 60 million students in Tynker's existing global user base. The acquisition is also key for both firms that share the same vision of democratising access to coding for students.

"At Tynker, we believe that kids of all ages should develop the critical thinking skills needed to become the 'makers of tomorrow," said Krishna Vedati, co-founder and CEO of Tynker.

"We wholeheartedly believe that joining the BYJU'S family can help children on a global level develop the fundamental STEM skills that will serve them well as they progress in school and ultimately help prepare them for careers in both technical and non-technical fields," he added.

Over the last year and a half, Byju's has acquired two additional major edtech companies in the United States -- educational gaming firm Osmo and digital reading platform Epic. All three acquisitions map back to Byju's goal of investing $1 billion in the US edtech market over the next three years.

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