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/

How Edtech became personalised in the 2010s

• The internet is being used to reach this diverse population in the remotest corners, and advanced tech is being used to create new learning experiences
• If we look at the new technology accessible to teachers and students today, then we would agree that the accepted way to teach and learn has changed

By Zishaan Hayath

The integration of technology started with improving classroom experiences and reached adaptive learning platforms that students can personalise, says Toppr’s Zishaan Hayath

We are in an era where unprecedented ideas are unfolding in education, driven by technology. Digitising learning content has been imperative, keeping in mind affordability, accessibility and inclusiveness of the large trainable youth population. The internet is being used to reach this diverse population in the remotest corners, and advanced tech is being used to create new learning experiences. If we look at the new technology accessible to teachers and students today, then we would agree that the accepted way to teach and learn has changed. It is undeniable that education has evolved so much, and technology has opened up the world a lot for both students and teachers. In this article, we explore the journey of edtech through this decade that saw it evolve from smart classes to personalised learning apps on smartphones.

EDTECH SOLUTIONS WERE DESIGNED AROUND IMPROVING THE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE AND HELPING TEACHERS

Integration of technology in the learning and education system is evidently the greatest change in education in the past decade. The earliest technology innovations for schools were created around providing software and hardware to make the classroom experience better. More emphasis was put on the use of rich multimedia content as a teaching tool inside classrooms. We saw more and more teachers making use of overhead projectors and videos during their lessons. This was then considered to be a revolutionary in-classroom technology, leveraging a large repository of digital content across virtually all subjects from kindergarten to Class 12. This new technology helped schools with better educational resource planning and helped teachers with better lecture delivery. Performance management and tracking systems enabled teachers to measure the progress of students systematically. Such classrooms were called “smart classes”. Progress in technology, however, has led to much more.

INTERNET SHIFTED FOCUS FROM CLASSROOMS TO VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS WITH DIGITISED CONTENT.

Smart class solutions faced challenges like high set-up cost, hardware maintenance and non-payments by institutions. As a result, edtech companies started moving to asset-light models. Digitisation of learning material and availability on platforms, including YouTube, followed the wave of smart classes. Internet penetration made everything easier and faster, enabling students to access digital study material that was informational and interactive and could be accessed anytime, anywhere. The gap in the ability to access high quality learning material was shrinking. This boom in digitisation of content helped scale the concept of pre-recorded online classes in India. The availability of fast internet connections and easy access allowed students to be more informed and open to new avenues. ‘In jobs, expertise from experience is no longer critical’ Students were able to take on-demand classes without having to attend any physical classes. For students, this improved affordability, while reduced travel time allowed them to study at their own pace and time.

EDTECH STARTED GROWING EXPONENTIALLY WITH LEARNING APPS

As students started accessing learning material over the internet, it gave rise to a new opportunity. Newly introduced learning apps started providing content at one place, which was otherwise scattered. The content was now organised and designed around a teacher’s pedagogy. Online courses developed by proficient tutors gave students the experience of real-time learning while sitting in the comfort of their homes. Edtech saw growth in many disciplines, including primary and supplementary education, test preparation, reskilling and online certifications, and language learning. Global institutions started running online certification courses powered by edtech that helped in course delivery, examinations and assessments. Indian entrepreneurs made an impressive effort in following and customising the global trend of digitisation of the education system. Increasing awareness and higher disposable income boosted the edtech market and it attracted significant investments from Indian and global investors.

PERSONALISED LEARNING MARKED THE NEW AGE OF EDTECH

The second half of the last decade saw the use of advanced technology. Cutting edge tech, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), gave rise to education platforms that addressed the basic problem of the education system of India—the one-size-fits-all-approach. With a typical classroom having a teacher-to-student ratio of 1:50, the quality is often compromised and that’s where technology is useful. Adaptive learning platforms using AI and ML create personalised learning paths helping students study in the way they best understand, thus enabling them to learn as per their needs. Gamification in learning has helped engage students in a meaningful way, making them genuinely interested in their subject matter. Why companies will have to fill digital skill gaps soon: Wipro’s Saurabh Govil Cloud-based learning is fast emerging as the medium to make personalised and high quality learning available to all students. Live classes with teachers can be conducted on such platforms, along with pre-recorded video classes, where the students can access the material on their own time. Students can now reach out for academic help 24×7. This is quickly changing the possibilities of delivery mediums when it comes to affordable access to high-quality learning.

CUSTOMER ACQUISITION AND RETENTION WOULD BE KEY CHALLENGES TO FURTHER GROWTH

Availability and access to the internet are important for all of these technologies to become relevant to end-users, i.e. students and teachers. The number of people accessing the internet has grown manifold over the last decade. However, for a society like India where the culture of coaching classes is deep-rooted, it is challenging to drive the adoption of edtech platforms as an alternative. Students, parents and teachers need to be better informed of the benefits of edtech. Startups are trying various business models, including free, freemium and premium subscriptions to drive usage and trial. However, there is a lot of ground to be covered. As this decade ends, we recognise that the Indian education system has evolved fast, along with global trends. Technology has also enabled streamlining of the learning experience, improved accessibility and offered new resources to students. And there is only more to come. With one of the largest populations in the world, stronger implementation of AI and ML will help bring truly adaptive and personalised platforms addressing the real learning needs of students and professionals. Edtech is all set to give more accessible, high-quality and personalised learning and prepare the leaders of tomorrow.

Source: http://www.forbesindia.com/article/vision-2020/how-edtech-became-personalised-in-the-2010s/57109/1