Last Updated on 28/07/2021 by Sanskriti
Unicorn in the field of education technology Byju’s, the country’s most valued startup, has paid $600 million in cash, shares, and earnouts for Singapore-based Great Learning, which offers valuable retraining and higher education programs.
The Bengaluru situated company said on Monday that it plans to invest another $400 million in this area in the near future.
With a total investment of $1 billion, Byju expands its services beyond K-12 and exam prep, putting it in the professional upskilling and life-long learning market in India and worldwide. Under the leadership of its creator and CEO Mohan Lakhamraju, as well as co-founders Hari Nair and Arjun Nair, Great Learning will continue to function as a separate business inside the Byju’s group.
This investment could help to drive and expand learning and educational growth in India also in other countries such as Canada and North America.
Byju’s paid $500 million for Epic, a reading online platform for kids, barely a week ago. It also acquired Aakash Educational Services Ltd for $950 million in April, making it one of the biggest purchase deals in the edtech industry.
The purchases are being paid for with money raised from Abu Dhabi sovereign fund ADQ, UBS Group, and Blackstone Group LP, among others, for a total of $1.5 billion at a $16.5 billion value.
Byju’s stated that the cooperation with Greater Learning will combine its own technology and content skills with the latter’s professional courses at a time when the covid-19 epidemic and changing market dynamics have prompted experts in India and around the world to better equip.
Byju Raveendran said founder and Ceo of Byju’s, “Empowering learners with the right futuristic skills form a fundamental part of our vision. Great Learning is a globally recognized and reputed professional education company and this partnership expands our reach into this new segment. We are united in our mission to provide professionals with high-quality and industry-relevant learning programs in this competitive global economy.”
This organization is a Great Study and a self-funded organization that has provided 170 countries with over 60 million hours of learning and 1.5 million learners from different countries.
It works with over 500 business partners for their skill development and talent requirements and has a network of 2800 industry expert mentors.
upGrad and Simplilearn sponsored by Blackstone focus on professional retraining and upskilling of the trainees.
“At Great Learning, we have been working towards our mission of making high-quality, transformational education accessible to learners everywhere. Together with Byju, we will be able to accelerate our progress towards this goal and meet the growing need for upskilling both in India and around the world. Further, as higher education moves online, we will leverage our joint strengths in technology, content, pedagogy, and instructors to create unparalleled learning opportunities at affordable prices for everyone,” Mohan Lakhamraju, founder and CEO of Great Learning, said.
With the appropriate type of handholding and coaching, Lakhamraju said the firm experienced a big rise in users in the previous year and the completion rate by customers on its platform is 91 percent.
Business management, Software engineering, business analytics, artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning, cloud computing, and other programmes are available through Great Learning.
Byju’s is also in the market to buy, a popular after-school studying software called Toppr for $150 million. It is believed that the deal will be disclosed soon.
Byju’s will have purchased six companies in India and the United States by 2021 as a result of this deal.