India's Byju's acquires online coding school

Byju's states that it has acquired the company for $300 million. It facilitates an exit for WhiteHat backers Owl Ventures, Omidyar Network and Nexus Venture Partners, which backed a $10 million Series A round for the company last year.

Founded in 2018 by by Karan Bajaj, an author of dramatic fiction and a former television executive, WhiteHat seeks to offer primary and secondary school students a structured curriculum for learning various programming languages and how to build commercial products at an early age. Student users are tasked with creating complex games, animations and apps of their own with the help of experienced tutors via on-on-one learning sessions.  

Byju’s stated in a press release it will make investments in the company’s technology platform, product innovation and expand its teacher base. The investment should also allow Byju’s to offer coding-based learning as an option to its own userbase.

WhiteHat will continue to operate independently. Bajaj will continue to lead WhiteHat as it seeks to grow its userbase in the US, Australia and New Zealand. 

“Empowering children with the right future skills has always been part of our vision at Byju’s and coding fits well into this. WhiteHat Jr’s coding product capabilities, combined with our pedagogy, expertise and scale, will help expand our learning offerings for school students,” said Byju Ravendran, founder of Byju’s.

Byju's has raised three rounds of funding this year totaling $423 million. Investors include Tencent Holdings, Naspers Ventures, Sequoia Capital India, General Atlantic, Bond Capital and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Byju’s claims it has more than 4.2 million annual paid subscribers and that it earned INR28 billion ($374 million) in revenue for the financial year ending in March. WhiteHat is Byju’s fifth acquisition. Previous acquisitions include learning aptitude test provider Vidyarth, Math Adventures, TutorVista and Osmo, a developer of educational video games. The latter two operate in the US.

The company's latest plans include making educational videos and quizzes available in regional languages, especially in locations outside India’s metropolitan hubs. It is also looking to offer services for younger learners aged 6-8 and recently launched an online tutoring service.

Like many edtech platforms, Byju’s has seen a recent surge in user sign-ups. It claims 15 million students signed up after it announced free classes for a limited period. This was offered due to enforced social distancing measures and school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The momentum represents an opportunity for business model validation and extended runways in the burgeoning local edtech sector. Other VC-backed start-ups in this space include live tutoring platforms Vedantu and Unacademy, which is also looking to form an umbrella group of edtech start-ups through acquisitions. 

It comes as the government considers a package of regulatory reforms for the education sector. Changes proposed by the policy include the promotion of programming and other skill-based courses via internships for young learners, an increased focus on Indian languages, the creation of a single body to supervise higher education providers, and a requirement for students to study untill the age of 18.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Technology
• Exits
• Nexus India Capital Advisors
• Education
• Owl Ventures
• Omidyar Network
• TMT
• India