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Edtech giant BYJU’s has announced the acquisition of Gradeup, an online exam preparation platform. With this, BYJU’s hopes to strengthen its position in the online competitive exam preparation segment along with harnessing Gradeup’s pedagogy and student reach.
Gradeup will be rebranded as BYJU’S Exam Prep and will cater to students preparing for over 150 exams for government jobs and PG entrance exams such as UPSC, GATE, CAT, bank PO or clerk, Defence, UGC-NET etc.
Post-graduate segment
Byju Raveendran, Founder, and CEO, BYJU’s, said, “Our focus has always been on ensuring that every learner has access to the highest quality of teachers and content to help them learn better. With Gradeup on board, we will be able to further scale and expand our test-prep offerings in post-graduate level exams. We aim to bring our complementary strengths and expertise together to create engaging and personalised learning experiences.”
Shobhit Bhatnagar, CEO, Gradeup, said, “By combining live classes, assessments, and quality study material, we have built a highly specialised offering for students preparing for competitive exams. Together with BYJU’s, we will accelerate our growth and expand our reach across the country. Further, we will leverage their strengths in content to deepen our current product offering and broaden our coverage of exams.”
Acquisition bonanza
BYJU’s has over 100 million registered students and 6.5 million paid subscribers. In May 2021, BYJU acquired Aakash Educational Services which has been operating in the test-prep segment for the past 30 years and offers classes for exams like IIT JEE, NEET (UG), and NTSE. Now with Gradeup on board, BYJU’s will be able to scale up in the test preparation segment and further strengthen PG level exam preparations courses as well.
The company has officially announced nine acquisitions in the edtech space, namely Gradeup, TutorVista, Edurite, Math Adventures, Osmo, Whitehat Jr, Aakash Education Services, Epic, and Great Learning. However, media reports have claimed that the company has completed about 15 acquisitions to date.
In July, while speaking to BusinessLine about the BYJU’s acquisition strategy, chief strategy officer Anita Kishore said that as the company is growing their business and they achieve scale, they have been thinking about the education space more broadly. “We are thinking about what are the places where technology can intervene and help people learn better – which has always been at the core of our vision,” she added.
Also see: BYJU’S adds student engagement tracker to its online tutoring program
Kishore also mentioned that the company considers acquisitions based on two factors. One, where they look at a particular segment and feel that acquisition is the right way to operate in this space. Second, if they see a product that poses a strong opportunity and complimentary possibility with BYJU’s existing products.
Founded in 2015, BYJU’S claims to be serving 100 million students around the world today. With an estimated valuation of $16.5 billion, BYJU’s is backed by marquee investors such as General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Naspers, Silver Lake, and Tiger Global.
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