Byju's acquires Aakash in nearly Rs 7,300 crore deal

In an estimated deal worth USD 1 billion (about Rs 7,300 crore) ed-tech start-up Byju’s has acquired Aakash Educational Services Ltd (AESL). Even after the deal, AESL will continue to operate as a separate entity and further expand its presence in the country.

New Delhi: Ed-tech startup Byju's on Monday said it has acquired Aakash Educational Services Ltd (AESL) to bolster its presence in the test preparation segment in the country.

According to sources, the deal is worth close to USD 1 billion (about Rs 7,300 crore) - making it the biggest acquisition by Byju's to date.

The companies, however, did not comment on the financial details of the deal. As part of the transaction, Aakash founders and Blackstone will become shareholders in Byju's.

Byju's, which is the most valued ed-tech startup in the country, is backed by marquee investors like Mary Meeker, Yuri Milner, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global and others. It is estimated to have raised over USD 2 billion in funding to date.

In the past, Byju's had acquired TutorVista and Edurite (from Pearson in 2017) and Osmo in 2019. Last year, the General Atlantic-backed company had bought coding training platform WhiteHat Jr for USD 300 million.

"This will be the largest integration in the education space in India, especially in the startup space...COVID has really opened the gates to online education significantly and going forward, we believe that all kinds of models in education will exist in K-12, test prep and even in higher education," AESL Managing Director Aakash Chaudhry told PTI.

After the integration, Byju's will make further investments to accelerate Aakash's growth, he noted.

Chaudhry said AESL will continue to operate as a separate entity and further expand its presence in the country.

"At Aakash, we are looking to transform student experiences by steering innovative and digitally-enabled learning solutions. Together with BYJU'S, we will work towards building an omnichannel learning offering that will accelerate test-prep experience to the next level," he said.

Aakash has a pan-India network of 215 centres (including franchisees), and a student count of more than 2.5 lakh.

In 2019, private equity firm Blackstone had picked up a 37.5 per cent stake in AESL.

Byju's cited industry reports and said the test preparation and after school tutoring (high school) segment is estimated to be a USD 7-8 billion opportunity in India and is expected to witness 55-60 per cent growth over the next 4-5 years.

Launched in 2015, Byju's has over 80 million students cumulatively learning from the app, 5.5 million annual paid subscriptions, and an annual renewal rate of 86 per cent. During April-September 2020, Byju's added 45 million new students to its platform.

(With PTI Inputs)