Two acquisitions in a week - BYJU'S intensifies edtech market reach with Great Learning and Epic!

Edtech unicorn BYJU'S has announced the acquisition of upskilling startup Great Learning for $600 million consisting of cash, stock, and earnout. It had also announced to invest $400 million into Great Learning to accelerate its growth. This is BYJU'S first acquisition in the upskilling segment beyond the K-12 and test prep segments. The startup will continue to be an independent company under the BYJU'S umbrella with founders Mohan Lakhamraju, Hari Nair, and Arjun Nair.

The investment will accelerate Great Learning's organic and inorganic growth in India and across global markets. It will further expand its high-quality, transformational offerings to learners everywhere. Just last week, it also acquired US-based Epic for $500 million to boost its overseas business. Speaking of the acquisitions, Byju Raveendran, Founder, and CEO, BYJU’S, said, “Learning, unlearning, and relearning is an important skill. While we have been growing in the K-12 and test prep segment, we saw this as the third big opportunity. In our strategic path, we have always built where we have the expertise; but we also know what we don't know. In areas where we don't have the expertise, we have looked at exceptional entrepreneurs, teams, products, and taken the acquisition route.”

“With this acquisition , we now have a big presence in three verticals - schools, test prep, higher education, and upskilling segment. Most of these platforms can be scaled up globally except for test prep where we will focus only on India through Aakash,” Raveendran added. “We'll add more courses, and also spend on creating brand awareness. We aim to go deeper into the new markets where they have got good traction. Just like for test prep we depend on Aakash, for upskilling we’ll depend on Great Learning.”

All BYJU'S Acquisitions

Apart from the Great Learning deal, the edtech unicorn has also closed the acquisition of smaller rival Toppr in a $150 million cash and stock deal. It is also in talks to acquire test prep startup Gradeup. Further, BYJU'S has now spent over $2 billion on acquisitions in the past six months making way for the largest edtech consolidation in the industry. The deals have been the unicorn’s second-, and third-largest deals. It had acquired Whitehat in a $300 Mn all-cash deal and Aakash institute for $1 Billion. The acquisition value of its smaller acquisitions is still unknown.