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Byju’s, an edtech unicorn, is said to be in discussion with investors to raise up to $600 million to fund its acquisition plans which include Aakash Educational Services, which it is learnt to have bought recently.
Sources said that once the funds are raised, the valuation of Byju’s will go up to around $15 billion.
Byju’s, which calls itself an educational technology and online tutoring firm, was founded by Byju Raveendran, a former school teacher, in 2011. There was no official confirmation from Byju’s about the fund-raising plans
The last-known valuation of the edtech start-up was $11 billion. According to reports, Byju’s is expected to buy Aakash Educational Services for about $1 billion.
AESL buy
Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL) provides test preparatory services to students preparing for medical and engineering entrance exams, school/board exams.
The first centre under ‘Aakash’ was started in 1988 by JC Chaudhry, offering coaching services for medical entrance examinations. It has a network of 200-plus centres and a student count of more than 2.5 lakh. Byju’s has 80 million users and about 6 million annual paid subscribers.
Recent fund-raising
Byju’s recent fund-raising initiatives include $200 million each from Tiger Global and General Atlantic; $122 million from DST Global; $23 million from Bond venture capital firm; $500 million from Silver Lake and $200 million from T Rowe, BlackRock. All these funds were raised in 2020 and were worth a total of $1 billion.
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