Through a Singapore-based company he owns, CEO Byju Raveendran owns a significant portion of the offline tutor, the only profitable business in the house.
When news broke in January 2021 that Byju’s, India’s most valuable unicorn, which was then valued at $12 billion, was in talks to buy Aakash Educational Services Ltd for $1 billion, it took edtech industry watchers by surprise.
The deal, one of the world’s biggest edtech acquisitions, was announced three months later. It was a move that came out of left field. A pioneer of online education in India going after the champions of offline coaching. It started a trend. Today, every online education company either has or is planning to have an offline presence, but I digress.
Two years …
Pradip is a co-founder at The Morning Context and leads our newsletters vertical. He has previously worked at The Ken as a staff writer, at Mint as an assistant features editor and the Deccan Chronicle as a copy editor. He works with a slew of expert newsletter writers across subjects and domains. His own writing spans the gig economy, farmers caught in the crossfire of technology, global warming and parents trapped in the edtech wave. Some of his best stories have come at the intersection of technology and human endeavour.
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