Media and Internet company IAC has pocketed (yet) another web property — picking up veteran online tutoring website Tutor.com for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition completed today, meaning Tutor.com is now an IAC operating business. George Cigale, founder and CEO of Tutor.com, will remain as CEO and continue to run the business from Tutor.com’s offices in New York City.
Back in August, IAC bagged About.com, ConsumerSearch.com and CalorieCount.com for $300 million cash. Other online brands under the IAC umbrella include Ask.com, Dictionary.com, Match.com and Vimeo.
Tutor.com was founded back in 1998, and offers online one-to-one tuition to students from more than 2,500 tutors. IAC describes the company as “small” — it’s been the conduit for more than 8.8 million online tutoring sessions to-date — but reckons there is a lot of potential to grow the business — by bringing its product, marketing and distribution expertise into play.
“Tutor.com has done the hard part, having built over many years an incredible nationwide network of high quality tutors ready to help students improve their learning,” said Greg Blatt , CEO of IAC, in a statement. “We think it’s ripe for us to accelerate usage by bringing to bear our consumer Internet expertise in areas like product, marketing and distribution. It’s not often we find a company with such untapped potential that our particular skill set can help unlock, in an area that truly helps people improve their lives, all at a compelling valuation. Although it’s small, we’re excited about the acquisition.”
The online education space certainly has bags of potential for growth — with increasing numbers of students turning to digital tools to help them study (such as StudyBlue), and traditional academic institutions expanding into new types of online courses that give them access to a larger, more diverse audience.