After $540 round led by Naspers, the world’s highest-valued edtech company Byju’s begins 2019 with an acquisition of US-based gaming cum learning platform Osmo. The Bengaluru-based Unicorn has spent $120 million to acquire the kids-focused augmented reality gaming producer for iPads and iPhones.
With the acquisition, Byju’s will leverage Osmo’s physical-to-digital technology and content to expand its current offerings in the age bracket of 3 to 8 years.
Led by India-origin entrepreneur Pramod Sharma, Osmo’s team is based out of Silicon Valley and it will continue to operate independently post take over.
Sharma along with Jerome Scholler founded the startup in 2013 when it was known as Tangible Play. The platform is being used by over 30,000 schools in over 42 countries and it has reached around a million families, mostly from the US.
Till date, Osmo has raised over $30 million from Mattel, Sesame Workshop, Upfront Ventures, K9 Ventures, and Accel.
The acquisition is in the line of Byju’s overseas expansion plan along with adding more features across categories. Valued little less than $4 billion, the Tencent-backed startup has over 30 million registered students and 2 million annual paid subscribers.
In the 2017-18 period, Byju’s had made several acquisitions including Tutorvista and Edurite and Math Adventures to strengthen its horizon in the overall local edtech space.
In FY18, the company recorded a 2X jump in revenue from Rs 248.12 crore in FY17 to Rs 500.21 crore. The net sales contributing 94.3 per cent to the revenue, also took a 2X jump from Rs 230.22 crore to Rs 471.8 crore.
The company claims to be profitable in the last quarter of FY18 and further aims to attain full-year profitability by the end of the current financial year (FY19).
The development was reported by TechCrunch.
