After entering new territories through acquisitions, the country’s biggest online education startup, Byju’s is now planning to acquire Aakash Educational Services Pvt Ltd for $1 billion, as per the Bloomberg reports.
Aakash Institute Acquisitions
Here Aakash Educational Services runs Aakash Institute.
It is the well-known chain of coaching centers that train students for engineering and medical entrance exams which are backed by Blackstone Group.
Currently, Aakash Educational Services have 200 coaching institutes across the country.
The educational services have a student count of more than 2,50,000, which will definitely boost BYJU’S direct entry into the test preparation market.
In November 2020, Aakash Educational Services had appointed Abhishek Maheshwari as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company.
Interestingly, he was the President of International Business for BYJU’S, where he was responsible for BYJU’S global growth before joining them.
What Does BYJU’s Say About The Possible Acquisitions?
So far, both BYJU’s and Aakash Educational Services have not yet responded to Business Insider’s queries.
When we spoke with BYJU’S founder Byju Raveendran in October 2020, about a possible entry into the brick and mortar school market, here’s what he had to say.
While talking about the possible entry into the brick and mortar school market, BYJU’S billionaire founder Byju Raveendran, said “Conceptually, there is a strong business model there, but it’s a very risky space in India to get into also. You never know what time the regulations can hit you in the school space,” in October 2020.
When asked if there would be a BYJU’S school, which could take the $12 billion edtech giant’s model offline, he said, “No, there won’t be”.
“We are very clear that what we have created is to have more active learners, especially when they learn at home complementing the synchronous learning happening at schools. We’ll stay focussed on what we know best,” Raveendran added.
Talking about the new acquisitions, Raveendran said, “We are not starting from zero here; we have made two good acquisitions which will help us accelerate our international expansion plans. One is Osmo which is a Palo Alto-based company, they are expected to close this year with a $100 million revenue. And the other is White Hat Jr, where we will be using their model of having teachers in India helping students around the world,” to Business Insider in an earlier interview.
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