Amazon makes entry, Byju’s eyes enlargement: Ed-tech cos see growth amid pandemic

Internet large Amazon turned the newest entrant Wednesday to India’s booming schooling expertise, or ed-tech, section with the formal launch of Amazon Academy, a service for college kids to organize for aggressive entrance examinations. The improvement comes the identical day Blackstone-backed Aakash Educational Services confirmed it was in talks with Byju’s in an acquisition of the previous reportedly value $1 billion.
As a results of the expansion witnessed as a result of Covid-19 pandemic, India’s schooling section noticed a report influx of over $2 billion throughout 2020 from personal fairness and enterprise capital (PE/VC) companies, with majority being cornered by startups like Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu, Toppr and so forth. Analysts stated curiosity in ed-tech companies has been primarily as a result of pandemic, which pressured colleges and schools to close down and prompted folks to improve expertise.
In an announcement, Amazon India stated its on-line preparation providing will equip college students with in-depth data and follow routines required for the JEE, by means of curated studying materials, stay lectures and complete assessments in math, physics and chemistry.
The e-commerce large had already marked an entry to IIT-JEE teaching area with a restricted launch of JEE Ready app in 2019, which allowed candidates to check their preparedness for JEE Mains.
Globally, in 2013, Amazon had acquired TenMarks Education — a California-based supplier of web-based options for lecturers and oldsters to ship arithmetic curriculum to college students. It later shut down TenMarks and absorbed a few of its workers in varied roles throughout the corporate.
“Amazon Academy will offer students a range of JEE preparatory resources at launch, including specially crafted mock tests by industry experts, over 15,000 handpicked questions with hints and detailed step by step solutions for practice. The mock tests include chapter tests, part tests, and full tests that simulate the JEE pattern, helping students manage exam preparedness at their own pace,” Amazon stated. As per data on Amazon Academy’s web site, all content material is on the market free of charge, “for the next few months”.
Other giant web companies together with Google have positioned bets on India’s schooling sector. Last July, Google stated it has partnered with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to ship a “blended learning experience” throughout 22,000 colleges. It additionally, by means of its VC fund Capital G, invested in Bengaluru-based ed-tech agency Cuemath final month.
In the identical month, Facebook too tied up with CBSE to launch an authorized curriculum on digital security and on-line well-being. Earlier in February, Facebook had participated within the sequence E funding spherical of Unacademy.
For startups like Unacademy and Byju’s, acquisitions of smaller companies has been a key technique to broaden their presence. In the test-prep section itself, Unacademy made six acquisitions final 12 months, with the final one being NeoStencil, a check prep startup. In July 2020, it additionally acquired PrepLadder, a postgraduate medical entrance examination preparation platform.
Meanwhile, Byju’s is buying Aakash Educational Services (AESL), which operates greater than 200 tutoring centres within the nation — indicating the potential for a hybrid mannequin combining digital and bodily presence. Byju’s didn’t reply to a mail searching for feedback on the deal.

In an announcement, AESL stated it’s “Aakash Educational Services Limited is in talks with Byju’s for building a strong partnership. The Chaudhry family and Founders, Mr JC Chaudhry & Mr Aakash Chaudhry remain committed and will continue to run Aakash Educational Services along with its management team with the same passion and commitment”.
“Putting these speculations to rest, we would like to state that AESL is on a mission to build India’s largest digitally-enabled, omni-channel education company. We will accelerate our digital transformation and deliver phenomenal value to our students. We will rapidly expand our omni channel & digital offerings, as we embark on the next trajectory of quality education & growth,” it added.
With this acquisition, Byju’s would surpass itself in making the largest deal within the ed-tech section, forsaking its acquisition of on-line coding platform WhiteHat Jr for $300 million final 12 months.