Byju’s, the world’s most-valuable education technology company, said on Thursday it acquired U.S.-based Osmo, an award-winning playful learning platform, for $120 million. This is Byju's first-ever purchase of a U.S. company. Post-acquisition, Osmo will continue to scale as a standalone brand, the company said in a statement.
The acquisition will bolster Byju’s international plans to innovate, explore, and create new levels for tech-enabled personalised learning solutions. With the integration of Osmo, Byju’s will also look to offer a unique, customised, engaging, and fun learning solution for younger kids.
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Osmo’s chief executive and co-founder, Pramod Sharma, and his core team will continue to remain at Osmo’s helm.
“We started Osmo for parents looking for a way to combine physical, hands-on play with the power of digital platforms to foster a love of learning,” said Sharma. “Finding a visionary education company like Byju's opened an exciting opportunity to work together to carry forward our mission across all primary school grade levels on a global scale.”
At Byju's, the focus has been on creating engaging and immersive content along with offering a personalised learning experience to students across grades. The company believes Osmo’s use of mixed reality interactions can take these learning experiences to new audiences and applications and expand its offering of educational content.
“Together with Osmo, we have the critical elements needed to build out an unprecedented library of engaging and entertaining educational content for a global pre-K-12 student audience,” said Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO, Byju’s–The Learning App. “With this acquisition, we are expanding into a new age demographic and entering the world of younger kids (age group three-eight). Our partnership with Osmo will help kids acquire the love for learning at an early age by introducing ‘play-based learning’.”
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The Bengaluru-based company has been growing at 100% for the past three years and is on target to triple its revenue to Rs 1,400 crore this year. Byju’s has aggressive plans for international market expansion and will continue to make big investments in technology that will help to further personalise learning for students.
Launched in 2015, Byju’s is the leader in offering personalised learning programs for school students in grades 4-12 in India. With 30 million students cumulatively learning from the app and over 2 million annual paid subscriptions, Byju’s has witnessed phenomenal growth. The app creates personalised learning programs for individual students based on their proficiency levels and capabilities which help them learn at their own pace and style.