India’s edtech giant BYJU’S has acquired a US-based digital reading platform Epic for $500 million. The American platform is focussed on nurturing the habit of reading in the kids of age 12 and below.

The acquisition is said to help BYJU’S in expanding its US footprint by providing access to the more than two million teachers and 50 million kids in Epic’s existing global user-base.

“We created Epic to make quality books more accessible to kids everywhere, and to build a safe place for them to discover the joy and magic of reading in their own way,” said Suren Markosian, CEO and co-founder of Epic.

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As a part of this acquisition, Suren Markosian, Epic CEO and co-founder Kevin Donahue, will continue carrying out the operations at Epic in the same roles. Epic has a collection of 40,000+ popular, high-quality books, audiobooks and videos from 250+ publishers.

“Our partnership with Epic will enable us to create engaging and interactive reading and learning experiences for children globally. Knowing that Epic and its products are rooted in the same mission, it was a natural fit,” said Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO, BYJU’S.

Key investors

Founded by Byju Raveendran in 2015, BYJU’S claims to be serving 100 million students around the world today. With this acquisition, the company has made 12 acquisitions including the likes of Toppr, Aakash Educational Services, WhiteHat Jr and others. The total funding raised by the edtech major comes to about $2.7 billion. Some of its investors include General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Naspers, Silver Lake and Tiger Global.

The company further noted that this acquisition stems from the two companies’ shared vision that education is the key to opportunity and that reading inspires curiosity and fuels a child’s love for learning. Reading fluency is fundamental for academic development because problems with this skill can interfere with a student’s ability to learn other subjects as they make their way through later grades.

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