AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

Indian edtech firm Byju’s valued at about $8.2b

By: Kenan Machado

• Indian edtech company Think and Learn, the owner and operator of learning app Byju’s, is now valued at about US$8.2 billion, following a fresh US$200 million funding by private equity firm General Atlantic, a person familiar with the company’s thinking said.

The latest injection in the company’s series F round comes after Tiger Global’s US$200 million investment last month.

“General Atlantic has been one of our strongest partners, and this additional investment shows their confidence in our vision, growth, and future,” Byju’s founder Byju Raveendran said in a press release.

The education app creates learning programs for K-12 students, as well as for other competitive exams. It currently has 42 million registered users and 3 million paid subscribers, according to the company. AD. Remove this ad space by subscribing. Support independent journalism.

This latest fundraise comes amid reports of turmoil at other Indian unicorns. The snafu at SoftBank-backed WeWork has forced many to pivot and focus on profitability, which has hurt growth prospects at a time when India’s economy is slowing.

Byju’s is one of the few profitable startups in India. It got its start in 2005, when Raveendran took a break as a service engineer for a shipping company to coach students.

The company turned profitable on a full-year basis for the financial year that ended in March 2019, Byju’s said. According to the firm, net profit stood at about US$2.8 million, with revenue of about US$207 million. It had earned about US$73 million in revenue a year earlier. However, Byju’s didn’t provide a figure for the bottom line for fiscal year 2018.

Byju’s is on track to earn a little more than US$420 million for the financial year that will end in March 2020, it said. The company adds that students use the app for some 71 minutes on average daily, and renewal rates are currently at 85%.

The firm raised US$150 million in July 2019 via a round led by sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority. Edtech investor Owl Ventures was also involved in the fundraise. Their investment in Byju’s marked the first time that the two firms backed an Indian startup. AD. Remove this ad space by subscribing. Support independent journalism.

Four months earlier in March, Byju’s raised about US$11.4 million from General Atlantic and Tencent, which took its valuation to about US$4 billion.

Other notable investors in the company are Naspers, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others.

Source: https://www.techinasia.com/indian-edtech-firm-byjus-valued-us82-billion

The Landscape Of Edtech: Mapping The Innovation Revamping Education In India

• Over $1.8 Bn has been invested into Indian edtech startups from 2014 to 2019
• The test prep segment has the highest capital inflow and the greatest demand in India
• India’s tech economy growth has pushed the demand for skill development solutions

By: Sandeep Singh

From classrooms to smart devices, the medium of education and learning in India has gone through a paradigm shift. With over 665 Mn wireless internet subscribers (Q3 2019), India has seen a massive 14% increase in the addressable base for internet services in just one year. This rate of adoption has meant great things for startups and digital products and services and has given rise to personalisation and convenience when it comes to the school curriculum and off-classroom learning.

The growing popularity of online learning has provided a major push to two of the top subsectors in the edtech market— test preparation (from K-12 to entrance exams) and online certification. To put this into perspective, between 2014 to 2019, startups in test prep and online certification startups earned a whopping 88% ($1.6 Bn) of the total capital inflow in edtech.

The skewness in funding and investor interest for test prep and online certification startups is in line with the prevalence of the grades-first mentality in the Indian market as well as the need for skilled tech labour. These products are highly in demand in the Indian market because they mirror the traditional climb up the education ladder — preparation for exams and getting the right certificate for employment.

Source: https://inc42.com/datalab/the-landscape-of-edtech-mapping-the-innovation-revamping-education-in-india/

The Top 5 Tech Trends That Will Disrupt Education In 2020 – The EdTech Innovations Everyone Should Watch

Bernard Marr Contributor 

• One solid indicator that EdTech is big business is the number of billionaires the sector created.
• According to Deloitte, the Chinese education market should reach $715 billion by 2025 and was responsible for creating seven new billionaires.

The richest was Li Yongxin, who leads Offcn Education Technology that provides online and offline training for individuals who want to take civil service exams, but there were other EdTech business leaders represented. Here we consider the key technologies that underpin the EdTech revolution as well as the top 5 tech trends set to disrupt education in 2020.

Key Technologies that Underpin the EdTech Revolution

A discussion about the top tech trends that will disrupt education must first begin with the technologies that will influence these trends.

Artificial intelligence will continue to fill gaps in learning and teaching and help personalize and streamline education. As students interact with connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices and other digital tools, data will be gathered. This big data and analysis of it is instrumental for personalized learning, determining interventions, and what tools are effective. Extended reality, including virtual, augmented, and mixed realities, helps create different learning opportunities that can engage students even further. Education is increasingly becoming mobile, and educational institutions are figuring out ways to enhance the student experience by implementing mobile technology solutions. Of course, this technology requires a capable network to handle the traffic demands, and 5G technology will provide powerful new mobile data capabilities. Finally, blockchain technology offers educational institutions to store and secure student records.  

Top 5 Tech Trends That Will Disrupt Education in 2020

1.  More accessible education

There aren’t only financial considerations when speaking about how accessible education is. The UN estimates there are more 263 million kids globally who are not getting a full-time education. While there are many reasons for this statistic, such as access to a qualified educational facility, there are also issues with proper materials, learning accommodations, and more. Online learning makes education available to those even in remote areas as well as make it easy to share curriculum across borders. EdTech solutions can overcome many common barriers to a quality education.

Technology can improve access to education. Digital textbooks that can be accessed online 24/7 won’t require transportation to get to an educational facility or library during certain hours. Digital copies are relatively cheap to produce, so textbook fees aren’t as taxing for digital versions as they might be with physical versions that cost more to create. Similarly, translating physical textbooks into all the languages natively spoken is cost-prohibitive for publishers when they are producing only physical copies of books. Digital versions make these translations much more feasible.

Within the classroom, the ultimate accommodation for learning differences is called differentiated learning. This allows students to have learning that is tailored to their personal needs. This and student-paced learning where students can move through and review material at the speed they need is much more feasible when using technology. There are also tech solutions for students who have physical or learning disabilities.

2.  More data-driven insights

Just like it does for other industries, technology can help educational institutions and educators be more effective and efficient. By analyzing the data about how digital textbooks are consumed, or educational technology is used, valuable data-driven insights for how to enhance learning can be attained as well as provide info to make decisions about what tools aren’t effective. Technology, including big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, will also allow for more in-depth personalization of the content for an individual’s learning needs. At the university level, data is no longer siloed into individual department’s Excel spreadsheets but is consolidated at the institution level, so insights can be extracted. With the assistance of data-driven insights to readily see where students need more support and what support is necessary, teachers are freed up to inspire students and change lives.

3.  More personalized education

While a personalized education experience isn’t a novel concept, technology can make achieving it much easier. Today’s classrooms are diverse and complex, and access to technology helps better meet each student’s needs. Technological tools can free teachers up from administrative tasks such as grading and testing to develop individual student relationships. Teachers can access a variety of learning tools through technology to give students differentiated learning experiences outside of the established curriculum.

4.  More immersive education

Extended reality encompassing virtual, augmented, and mixed reality brings immersive learning experiences to students no matter where they are. A lesson about ancient Egypt can literally come alive when a student puts on a VR headset and walks around a digital version of the time period. Students can experience hard-to-conceptualize current-day topics through extended reality, such as walking among camps of Syrian refugees. This technology enables learning by doing. Students are used to using voice interfaces at home when asking Alexa to define a word when doing homework, but this technology can also support learning and improve education in other ways. Chatbots can deliver lectures via conversational messages and engage students in learning with a communication tool they have become quite comfortable with, such as what CourseQ offers. Ultimately, if chatbots can make the learning process more engaging for students and reduce the workload on human educators, their use in education will continue to grow.

5.  More automated schools

Many schools already rely on online assessments that are flexible, interactive, and efficient to deliver. Automation will continue to alter schools as more smart tools get incorporated, including face recognition technology to take attendance, autonomous data analysis to inform learning decisions so teachers don’t need to analyze data as well as help automate administrative tasks. When a student interacts with online technology, they leave a digital footprint that informs learning analytics. But automation will also help control building costs by automatically controlling lighting and heating/cooling systems and to help keep students safe with automated school security systems.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2020/01/20/the-top-5-tech-trends-that-will-disrupt-education-in-2020the-edtech-innovations-everyone-should-watch/#5dbc43f42c5b

Edtech Startup Eupheus Learning Raises $4.3 Mn To Scale Operations

• The funds will be used to increase nationwide presence, develop new product offerings etc
• It will also start its operations in the Middle East
• The company claims that in H1 FY20, it recorded a 3x increase in revenues

By: Bhumika Khatri

New Delhi-based edtech startup Eupheus Learning, on Thursday (January 23), announced that it has raised $4.3 Mn (INR 30 Cr) in its Series A funding round. The investment is a mix of equity and venture debt, which was led by Yuj Ventures.

Other investors in the round included Sixth Sense Ventures. The funds will be used to increase nationwide presence, develop new product offerings, and expand the team. The company said it will also start its operations in the Middle East and drive international expansion in other markets.

Eupheus Learning was founded in 2017 by Sarvesh Shrivastava, Rohit Dhar, Ved Prakash Khatri, and Amit Kapoor. Operating across the Pre-K to Class XII segments, Eupheus offers products in all subject areas and packages both the curriculum and homework tracking tools in phygital form.

Sarvesh Shrivastava, managing director of Eupheus Learning said, “The online education segment in India is primed for massive growth, as the next generation of children enter classrooms across the country. By leveraging the power of technology, we’ve been able to bridge the divide between in-school and at-home learning and offer a seamless, end-to-end learning experience.”

The company claims that in H1 FY20, it recorded a 3x increase in revenues compared to the same period last year. It also said that it expanded its geographical presence to 70 cities in India from 52 earlier. The team has also grown to 175 employees as it has also forged new alliances with four international education players, taking its roster of global partnerships to 17.

“We are impressed by the founders’ experience, the previous track record of developing cutting edge content at Britannica, and the manner in which they have scaled Eupheus in a profitable manner in the last two years in a competitive market,” said Madhav Soi of Yuj Ventures.

Digital evolution and the boom in smartphone adoption are expected to define the way Indian students learn. Real-time book updates, online tutoring, edutainment, online test preparation, web-based research, and gamification — technology has changed our traditional education system in more ways than one.

Source: https://inc42.com/buzz/edtech-startup-eupheus-learning-raises-4-3-mn-series-a-funding/

Budget 2020: Let’s grow both edtech and skill-tech

• B-Schools, and the education industry in general, expect Budget 2020 to offer robust remedial solutions that are aligned with the vision of creating a thriving education ecosystem
• We hope the government will roll out incentives to provide impetus to the activities and subsequently to the growth of edtech as well as of skill-tech enterprises

By Vibhava Srivastava

Budget 2020 India: In Union Budget 2019, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed the New Education Policy (NEP) that acknowledged the importance of promoting skill development through schools as well as higher education with an emphasis on technology, including machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data analytics. The draft NEP 2019 envisioned preparing students not only to seamlessly merge with the workforce of tomorrow, but also to be in sync with evolving needs of Industry 4.0.

However, the said draft has a number of missing dots. It neither addresses current challenges (structural unemployment, decreasing job security, rise of gig economy), nor it suggests any mechanism to overcome these challenges. The upcoming Union Budget is an opportunity for the government to right its past wrongs.

B-Schools, and the education industry in general, expect Budget 2020 to offer robust remedial solutions that are aligned with the vision of creating a thriving education ecosystem. We hope the government will roll out incentives to provide impetus to the activities and subsequently to the growth of edtech as well as of skill-tech enterprises. Such incentives along with funding provisions will create space for collaboration amongst the eminent B-Schools and industry. This will provide a boost to the industry’s sluggish growth.

The author is assistant professor, Marketing, MDI Gurgaon

Source: https://www.financialexpress.com/budget/budget-2020-lets-grow-both-edtech-and-skill-tech/1828323/