Exclusive: Byju’s in talks to acquire Doubtnut at a valuation of over $100 Mn

Edtech major Byju’s is in late-stage talks to acquire multilingual instant doubt clearing app Doubtnut, according to two people familiar with the matter. This comes just months after Doubtnut raised $15 million in a round led by Tencent. 

If the deal goes through, it will give Byju’s a fillip in the supplementary education segment, added the two people. 

“Doubtnut has high DAU and engagement but doesn’t have monetization yet,” said the first person cited above, requesting anonymity. “It also caters to the tier III, IV and beyond markets where Byju’s is absent.”

This deal is expected to value Doubtnut at over $100 million, said the second person cited above but Entrackr could not independently verify this. 

Byju’s declined to comment while Doubtnut did not respond to queries sent by Entrackr at the time of publishing. We will update the story as and when they respond.

Founded in 2017 by Tanushree Nagori and Aditya Shankar, Doubtnut offers free video solutions to users who send screenshots of their questions on the platform. The platform also offers a plethora of other videos for students to access, all free of cost. Their target audience is the K12 segment and also competitive exam seekers including JEE and NEET.  

As of January, the platform had over 13 million monthly active users across its web platform, mobile application and YouTube and Whatsapp channels. It has claimed to clear over 250 million doubts across subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. 

With students across India turning to online education during the pandemic, education technology startups have gained immense attention and momentum over the last few months. 

Just today, Byju’s itself had a new investor added to its list. It raised an undisclosed amount from Mary Meeker’s growth-stage fund Bond, making it their first bet in India and also valuing Byju’s at $10.5 billion making it the second highest valued startup in the country after Paytm.

A potential acquisition of Doubtnut by Byju’s is also part of a larger trend that is expected to play out in the coming months with multiple consolidations in the pipeline. 

As for edtech startups, most of them have seen their engagement numbers climb up drastically over the last few months. Byju’s claims to have 57 million registered students. 

In May, Unacademy, which focuses on preparing students for competitive exams, claimed that it saw an 82% surge in revenue in April when compared to the previous month while also registering 10X growth as compared to April 2019. Even other edtech platforms such as Toppr have witnessed an uptick in usage.