Big Indian Ed. Company BYJU’s Acquires U.S.-Based Digital Games Company
Not long after revealing its plans to move into the American education market, the major India-based app provider BYJU’s has announced that it is making its first-ever acquisition of a U.S.-based company.
BYJU’s says it will acquire Osmo, a digital games provider that seeks to promote hands-on learning. It marks a new strategy for BYJU’s in serving younger students, ages 3-8, company founder and CEO Byju Raveendran in a statement.
Since its creation in 2011, BYJU’s has attracted huge amounts of investment from some of the biggest names in education, including Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, and Sequoia Capital. BYJU’s delivers video-based lessons organized by grade and subject, loaded with animation and other features. It also offers learning programs focused on preparation for a variety of exams.
Just last month, BYJU’s said that it had picked up $540 million in new investment with plans to make a concerted push to sell its product in the U.S. and British education markets for the first time. The company said it planned to pour the new money into an aggressive international expansion and investments in technology.
BYJU’s officials said the acquisition of Osmo will help the Indian education company develop new innovations and promote “personalized learning solutions” that offer a “unique, customized, engaging and fun learning solution for younger kids.”
Raveendran said his organization was won over by Osmo’s physical-to-digital strategy and its ability to deliver rich and engaging material. BYJU’s wants to build out an “unprecedented library of engaging and entertaining educational content,” he said.
Osmo, based in Palo Alto, Calif., was founded six years ago by former Google engineers Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler. It says its goal is to bring physical toys into the digital world, through augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and other means.
Sharma said the acquisition gives Osmo the chance to expand its products across primary grades and reach a “global scale.”
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