Airtel acquires 10% stake in edtech startup Lattu Kids

Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel has acquired a strategic stake of 10% in edtech startup Lattu Kids. This is a part of Airtel’s Startup Accelerator Program to support early-stage startups that fit into the telecom major’s ecosystem.

Following the investment, Airtel will be distributing Lattu Kids’ content through its network. The three-years-old Mumbai-based startup helps children in the age bracket of  3 to 8 years to improve their English language foundation, reading skills, and maths through videos and games. 

The company claims to have reached 27 million kids across India in the last two years. Lattu Kids becomes the fourth startup to join the incubation program after conversational-AI tech startup Voicezen, software development firm Vahan, and logistics upstart Quikmile.

“We believe that Lattu Kids can make a positive impact in the space of online education and are excited to have them in our accelerator and partner in their growth,” said Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer of Bharti Airtel in a press statement. 

Unlike Play Shifu and Ichamp, Lattu Kids' pricing is modest ~ Rs 2,000 and positioned as a mass product. The company imparts fundamental skills including vocabulary, sentence formation, reading, and basic mathematics. According to its website, 210,000 hours of content watched by 95,000 users every month by commuters in Ola via Ola Play. 

The firm has over 600,000 subscribers on YouTube with total views of more than 200,100,654. The timing of the deal is perfect for Airtel as the Covid-19 pandemic has made masses comfortable with virtual learning. The announcement of the transaction also offered gain in its stock market value marginally.

The investment in Lattu Kids is the second major move by the telecom giant in the past five-six weeks. It forayed into live streaming space by launching its new product- Xstream Live to engage artists and their fan base. Entrackr had exclusively reported about the launch in the first half of May this year.