Byju's continues acquisition spree, buys Austrian math-learning co GeoGebra

The world's most valuable ed-tech company, Byju's acquired GeoGebra headquartered in GeoGebra. This is Byju's 9th major acquisition this year, and the transaction amounts to US$ 100 million based on certain sources. GeoGebra has a dynamic, interactive and collaborative mathematics learning tool.

Complementing Byju's overall product strategy, this acquisition integrates GeoGebra's capabilities to create new product offerings and learning formats to its existing mathematics portfolio. It expands Byju's aim of making math an engaging subject to better learning outcomes. The two like-minded companies can bring comprehensive, personalized and immersive learning experiences to all students.

Under the leadership of its founder and developer, Mr. Markus Hohenwarter, GeoGebra will continue to operate as an independent unit within the Byju's group.

The Chief Strategy Officer at Byju's, Ms. Anita Kishore, said, "The GeoGebra team has built a powerful and stimulating platform that complements Byju's mission of providing impactful learning for students. Designed to improve mathematical understanding, it offers significant features that provide interactive resources that adapt to every child's style and pace of learning." She also added, "At Byju's, with the help of innovative teaching and technology, we have been making math fun, visual, and engaging. And with GeoGebra on board, we will continue to enhance further, reimagine and transform the way Math is taught and learned."

With a rapidly expanding community of over 100 million learners across over 195 countries, GeoGebra brings geometry, spreadsheets, graphing, algebra, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use format. GeoGebra's interactive, multilingual, and stimulating learning environment will help make Math fun, visual and contextual. Mathematical thinking is grounded in visual processing. However, the value of the transactions hasn't been released by the company.

Byju's was launched in 2015 and since then has been a leading firm for schools and students in India to provide personalized learning programs. It has over 115 million students cumulatively learning from the app, 7 million paid subscriptions and an annual renewal rate of 86%.

Anita Kishore added, "Together with our combined strengths; we will have a wider reach and the best resources to build innovative and exciting next-generation learning formats."

The platform includes dynamic and interconnected geometry and algebra learning tools that assist in formulating and proving geometric conjectures. The software can be downloaded as an app or utilized online, and it has a simple user interface. For students worldwide, the curriculum is provided in several languages.

Markus Hohenwarter said, "GeoGebra was born out of a passion for helping students learn math in a visually appealing and engaging manner.

Our shared passion for learning and teaching resonates with BYJU'S, making them a perfect partner for our onward journey." He also added, "I am confident that this partnership will help millions of students to learn mathematics in an interactive way, in turn making them overcome their fear of math and learn to master it."

Markus, along with Michael Borcherds and Stephen Jull, the co-founders of GeoGebra founded in 2013, is on a mission to deliver rapid, sustainable growth in order to ensure GeoGebra has solid footings from which to deliver its vision over the long term. GeoGebra involves an enterprise as well as a philanthropic non-profit organization. Their commercial services help more than 300 established education service organizations and startups, while their non-profit helps students, teachers, researchers, and government agencies all around the world.

Byju welcomes the social mission of GeoGebra and acknowledges its importance in the world of mathematics. The firm is making sure that GeoGebra's current apps and web services will continue to be available free of cost to put the power of mathematics into the hands of students and teachers at any given time.

As the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online education, Byju's has been on an acquisition spree in India and all over the world. As the schools and offices remain shut, students and professionals are looking forward to upgrading their skills.

For about US$ 200 million, Byju's acquired US-based Tynker in September 2021, according to sources. Various other deals include the US$ 1 billion buy of New Delhi-based Aakash Educational Services (AESL) in April and the US$ 600 million acquisition of Singapore-headquartered Great Learning, a leading global player in professional and higher education.

It also bought Gradeup, one of India's leading online test preparation services, in September. Byju's paid US$ $500 million for Epic, a digital reading platform based in the United States, in July of this year. It also purchased Osmo, a US-based educational game business, for US$ 120 million in stock and cash in 2019 along with WhiteHat Jr, a company that teaches coding to youngsters, for US$ 300 million in August 2020.

Byju's wants to be one of the biggest companies in the industry in the United States, with a goal of US$ 1 billion in revenue in the next three years.

Besides Tynker, Byju's has also acquired two additional major ed-tech companies Osmo, and Epic, in the US, over the last year and a half. Byju's ambition of investing US$ 1 billion in the US ed-tech sector over the next three years is reflected in all three acquisitions.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.