Higher education startups are suddenly a hot proposition

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Editor's note: It is raining deals in India’s education technology space. Only this time, the action seems to have moved to the higher education segment. Three significant developments have happened in the last seven weeks alone, deals that feature a higher learning startup as either the acquirer or the target company. These deals could potentially shape the segment and, in turn, the edtech industry as a whole. In April-end, Entrackr reported that Byju’s, India’s largest edtech company, is in advanced talks to buy Great Learning, an eight-year-old bootstrapped startup focused on professional courses. If the deal materializes, it could mark Byju’s entry into the higher education and upskilling segment. The company “is likely to spend over $330-350 million to acquire Great Learning”, Entrackr reported, citing an anonymous source. Three weeks later, online executive education platform Eruditus said it had acquired Silicon Valley-based iD Tech, which holds offline and virtual coding camps, for $200 million in cash. The acquisition will bring Eruditus, which has mainly focused on higher education and executive learning so far, into the highly competitive K-12 segment. (K-12 in education …