India’s EdTech major Byju’s has recently announced that it will be expanding its presence this year in the U.S., Brazil, U.K., Mexico, Australia, and Indonesia with the launch of Byju’s Future School- a one-on-one live tutoring platform. For this venture Byju’s will partner with WhiteHat Jr., a coding platform to provide personalized learning in science, mathematics, music, fine arts, and coding among other subjects for students from grade kindergarten to eighth.
Byju’s global expansion plans will be led by the co-founder of WhiteHat Jr., Karan Bajaj. Byju’s had acquired WhiteHat Jr. for $300 million last year. WhiteHat Jr. that offers one-to-one sessions between teachers and students will facilitate Byju’s to offer courses in both synchronous and asynchronous formats. As per the company, all international offerings will be under a single brand name-Byju’s and WhiteHat Jr.’s overseas market will now become Byju’s Future School.
In late last year, the Bangalore-based startup had started experimenting in a few international markets and lately it has hired numerous high-profile executives to manage the varied geographies. Startup’s Future School will help students making a shift from passive to active learning by providing an interactive learning platform that includes real-time instructions with lessons.
The startup added 11,000 teachers in India that will cater to students from English speaking countries. With this new venture, the EdTech unicorn is targeting to penetrate further into non-English speaking markets such as Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico. For these markets, the company plans to hire teachers locally.
As per the company sources, the coding curriculum will also be available in Portuguese and Spanish. The Future School will also offer a range of subjects including fine arts, English, and music besides mathematics and science. According to the company, the subject categories are still in a developing stage.
Last year, the bulk of startup funding in the EdTech space was pinned down by Byju’s since the COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in subscriptions for online educational services. An array of investors including new participants Alkeon Capital and Silver Lake jointly infused over $1 billion in the startup. This year in March, the EdTech giant has raised $460 million in funding to build reserves for its international expansion plans.
About Byju’s
Founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran, the education technology company offers personalized learning programs for K-12 students. It also offers a learning platform for students preparing for competitive exams in the country like JEE, NEET, and IAS. The company claims to have over 80 million registered users and 5.5 million subscribers. After Paytm, Byju’s is India’s most-valued startup at a valuation of about $13 billion.
Discussion about this post