India's largest online ed-tech platform Byju's has inked a deal to acquire Aakash Educational Services Ltd for $1 billion, reported Bloomberg News.
Sources close to the matter said that the deal which is said to be one of the largest edtech acquistions should close in the next two or three months.
For the uninitiateld, the Bengaluru-based Byju's is on a fundraising spree as the pandemic has seen a soaring demand for online education.
Blackstone Group-backed Aakash Educational Services runs the well known Aakash Institute. It owns over 200 brick and mortar centers and teaches students to make it to India's elite engineering and medical schools.
If one goes by its website, the institute has tutored over 2,50,000 students so far.
Sources said that the deal will see Aakash's founders, the Chaudhry family exit completely and Blackstone will swap a portion of its 37.5% equity in the company for Byju's stake.
Earlier last year, Byju’s acquired Mumbai-based start-up, WhiteHat Jr, which teaches coding to children, for USD 300 million.
Post the. COVID-19-induced lockdown, Byju's has seen over 20 million new students learning from its platform for free. Today, the app has over 64 million registered students and 4.2 million annual paid subscriptions. The company had doubled its revenue from Rs 1,430 crore to Rs 2,800 crore in FY 19-20.
In other news, Global investor group Blackstone is planning to launch three IPOs from its India portfolio this year, reports said. Among its prospective IPOs is Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd which is likely to file a draft prospectus as soon as this month, a Bloomberg report said.
Aadhar is one of India’s largest mortgage providers to low-income earners. The company, controlled by Blackstone Group Inc, is planning to raise as much as $1 billion (Rs 7,000 - Rs 7,500 crore) from the share sale.
