Bengaluru: Education venture Byju’s has acquired Bengaluru-based career guidance and academic profile builder Vidyartha for close to Rs 50 crore, according to two sources familiar with the development.

Both the companies confirmed the development but declined to comment on the deal size. Vidyartha, founded in 2011 by Priya Mohan, an alumnus of Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, and Navin Balan, a technology professional, started as a career guidance platform for students and later started academic profiling of students by partnering with schools. It has tied up with over 2,000 schools and has been mandated by the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) to develop aptitude tests.

When contacted, Byju’s said, “Vidyartha has been doing some great work in the learning guidance and career planning space for school students.They have created an unique learning guidance platform that guides students based on their learning paths. As India’s largest ed-tech company, we are constantly innovating to create highly personalized learning products and Vidyartha will supplement our efforts in doing so.”

Vidyartha’s 20-member team will continue to work under a separate brand name post the acquisition. Byju’s, founded in 2007 as a test preparation platform by Byju Raveendran, saw an explosion in usage when it launched its mobile app targeted at school students in 2015.

The company says it has 3.3 lakh subscribers and 7 million in app downloads. The app helps with learning for students in classes 4 to 12, and for competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE, and GMAT.

Source: The Times of India

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