The Big Small Question

As Byju’s and Unacademy grow at breakneck speed, what will it take for smaller edtech players to survive?

- NAINI THAKER & NAANDIKA TRIPATHI

Anita Kishore recalls the first time she experienced education joining forces with technology—now popularly referred to as ‘edtech’. It was in 2013 at a seminar in the Indira Gandhi Stadium in New Delhi, with about 20,000 students attending and content being projected on a screen. “Byju [Raveendran] stood in the middle of the room, conducting a session with students learning from a ‘screen’,” she says.

A lot has changed since.

Today, Byju’s is one of the largest edtech players globally, with a valuation of a little over $13 billion. So far, it has received funding of $2.3 billion from investors including Tiger Investments, Baron Capital, Owl Ventures and BlackRock. On March 31, Byju’s raised another $460 million as part of its ongoing series F round, led by MC Global Edtech Investment Holdings LP, with participation from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital, among other investors.

With funding flowing in, Byju’s has also been on an acquisition spree—starting with Osmo in 2019, followed by online coding startup White Hat Jr last August for $300 million, making it one of the biggest deals in the Edtech space. It also bought virtual simulations startup LabInApp last September. According to Tracxn, Byju’s has acquired 11 companies worth $1.43 billion (as of February 2021). “The vision for most of these entrepreneurs is to try and get as many products out and get access to a larger platform. We have been able to scale these businesses by giving our full support, but also giving them the autonomy to run the company freely,” says Kishore, chief strategy officer at Byju’s. In the first 2.5 years since Byju’s launched its app, it saw about 45 million downloads; since the Covid-19 pandemic began, there has been another 40 million.