The world’s most valuable ed-tech company joins forces with America’s favorite hands-on playful learning brand to create a global titan of engaged and personalized learning
Bangaluru, January 17, 2019: BYJU’S, the world’s most valuable ed-tech company announced that it has acquired the US-based, the award-winning playful learning system for creating healthy screen time experiences for US$120 million. BYJU’S first ever purchase of a US company will see Osmo continue to scale as a standalone brand as BYJU’S taps the company’s physical-to-digital technology and content to expand and enhance its current offering.
This new acquisition will bolster team BYJU’S’ international plans to innovate, explore and set new benchmarks for tech-enabled personalised learning solutions. With the integration of Osmo, BYJU’S will also look to offer a unique, customised, engaging and fun learning solution for younger kids. Pramod Sharma, Osmo’s CEO and co-founder and his core team will continue to remain at Osmo’s helm.
Shared Love of Learning
The coming together of the companies is a natural fit rooted in a love of learning shared between Byju and Pramod. Both leaders reflect a complementary blend of India’s deep cultural ties to education – credited with producing top engineers and Fortune 500 CEOs – and lesson learned in Silicon Valley and US classrooms.
“We started Osmo for parents looking for a way to combine physical, hands-on play with the power of digital platforms to foster a love of learning,” explains Pramod Sharma, Founder – Osmo. “Finding a visionary education company like BYJU’S opened an exciting opportunity to work together to carry forward our mission across all primary school grade levels on a global scale. We’re excited about what we can accomplish together.”
Global Scale
At BYJU’S, the focus has always been on creating engaging and immersive content along with offering a personalized learning experience to students across grades. The company believes Osmo’s use of mixed reality interactions can take these learning experiences to new audiences and applications and expand its offering of educational content.“We were captivated by Osmo’s physical-to-digital approach to learning and fun from our first introduction,” recalls Byju Raveendran, Founder & CEO, BYJU’S –The Learning App. “Our vision is to make learning fun and engaging across age groups, across geographies. I strongly believe that using technology, we can make children all over the world fall in love with learning. Together with Osmo, we have the critical elements needed to build out an unprecedented library of engaging and entertaining educational content for a global pre-K-12 student audience. We are very excited by what we are planning to launch in the coming months.”
“With this acquisition, we are expanding into a new age demographic and entering the world of younger kids (age group 3-8). Our partnership with Osmo will help kids acquire a love for learning at an early age by introducing ‘play-based learning’. Osmo’s world-class product capabilities teamed with our expertise & scale, will help build strong learning products for younger students. Overall, the BYJU’S – Osmopartnership aims at fostering the love for learning through cutting-edge tech and a new approach to edu-tainment-based learning.”, Byju further added.
The company has been growing at 100% for the last 3 years, and is on target to triple it’s revenue to Rs.1400 crores this year. BYJU’S has aggressive plans for international market expansion and will continue to make big investments in technology that will help to further personalise learning for students.
Launched in 2015, BYJU’S Learning App is the leader in offering personalised learning programs for school students in grades 4-12 in India. With 30 million students cumulatively learning from the app and over 2 million annual paid subscriptions, BYJU’S has witnessed phenomenal growth. The app creates personalized learning programs for individual students based on their proficiency levels and capabilities which help them learn at their own pace and style.
