The world’s massive experiment with remote learning has done more than emphasize the cracks in the way we learn. It’s brought much needed attention and capital to potential solutions.
But it’s not just investors who are flurrying to the space; edtech incumbents are taking notice, too. Recent acquisitions show that edtech’s growth spurt is forcing incumbents to think bigger and scoop talent along the way.
India edtech giant Byju encapsulates how to strategize around momentum. In June, the company raised money at a $10.5 billion valuation. It currently leads India’s online edtech market. Days later, TechCrunch learned that the company is in talks to acquire two-year-old education learning app Doubtnut for $125 million.
It’s because Doubtnut has a hold in a place that Byju doesn’t: smaller, localized towns and villages within India. While Byju might be a household name within India’s larger cities, the buy could help it expand to smaller markets.
There’s also Docsity’s recent spree of buys. The global e-learning startup, which launched in 2010 to serve Italian students, is a social network for professionals and students. In early July, it announced plans to buy two edtech companies: Estudar Com Você, based in Brazil, and Koofers, based in the U.S.
Estudar com Você, founded in 2015 and nicknamed “Brazilian Khan Academy” sells video lessons and text-based explanations for students in Brazil. Docsity bought the upstart to broaden its offering to its largest market, Brazil, and introduce video content for colleges to its curriculum.
The company tells TechCrunch that the Estudar com Você purchase reinforces its position in its largest market and brings personalized, video-based content to college students.
Another boon to its growth is scooping up Koofers, which launched in 2010 out of Techstars. The buy brings Docsity’s registered user-base in the United States from 100,000 to 1 million.
With these two companies, Estudar com Você has up to 15 million monthly visits and now has over 4 million registered users in Brazil, and 1 million in the USA.
Finally let’s look at Hotmart, an online course provider that serves Brazil and the global Portuguese and Spanish markets. The company bought Teachable, a marketplace for teachers to sell their English-learning online courses and build up their own classroom businesses. Teachable only raised $12.5 million before getting bought.
Teachable CEO and founder Ankur Nagpal told TechCrunch that part of the reason he sold to Hotmart was because the businesses were similar in focus but different in market hold. Where Teachable works in English-speaking countries, Hotmart serves in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets.
“Synergistically, it just made a ton of sense … we instantly become one of the most valuable online education companies,” Nagpal told TechCrunch.
These examples, and a flurry of more, show that edtech’s boom is maturing before our eyes.
Coronavirus definitely led to a spotlight on the various tools that entrepreneurs are making to broaden access and depth of education. The emotional awakening also showed a need for collaboration. Education’s true adoption, sans a pandemic, often relies on being able to pitch itself as a one-stop shop for universities, school districts and consumers.
Mercedes Bent, an investor at Lightspeed Ventures who focuses on education, is looking for her next investment to be working on a blended solution of online and offline needs. The perfect blended platform? One that includes developer API integrations, embedded exercise, grading and feedback functionality, multimedia instruction formats, pre-recorded video with instructor front-facing video technology and messaging features. The list continues.
Bent hints that the future might thus be online learning, instead of remote learning. The scramble soured many people’s experience with wonky Zoom rooms and awkward technology gaps. The future, instead, is a blended technique that balances accessibility with comprehensiveness and reliability.