BYJU’S BIG BET: Indian education company Byju’s has acquired Osmo, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that sells educational games for kids, for $120 million, TechCrunch reports. The deal comes less than a month after Byju’s announced it had raised $540 million in funding.
Byju’s, founded in 2008 and based in Bangalore, launched as a tutoring service and expanded in 2015 to offer a mobile app. Its recent fundraise, which gave the company a $3.6 billion valuation, will allow Byju’s to expand its global reach and introduce English-language classes to younger children, ages 3-8. Byju’s courses are currently available for grades 4-12. In its press release, the company claims it is “on target to triple its revenue” to $250 million this year.
Osmo, which pairs physical toys and games with digital tablets to teach concepts from world geography to critical thinking and social-emotional skills, is expected to help grow Byju’s presence in the U.S. and lend its expertise working with small kids. Osmo has raised $32.5 million in venture capital since its founding in 2013, and says its kits are used in around 20,000 schools.
Byju’s plans to increase Osmo’s content offerings and lower the price of its hardware to make the product accessible to a wider audience, company officials told TechCrunch.
