BYJU’S Acquiring WhiteHat Jr. – Signals the New Trend in Education Sector Worldwide

• COVID-19 lockdown has impacted over 91% of the world’s student population. Countries across the world trying to handle the disruption by deploying different modes of learning through a mix of technologies.
• Companies like BYJU’S, Unacademy, and WhiteHat Jr. have increased their growth to twice and thrice in the last three months.
• BYJU’s acquires WhiteHat Jr for an all-cash deal of $300 million & now they are gearing up for launch in six new countries including, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Germany.

Recently, the well-known ed-tech company BYJU’S announced that it has acquired Mumbai-based ed-tech start-up, WhiteHat Jr. In the $300 million all-cash transaction deal, the online learning giants look forward to expanding their dominance worldwide. As per the official statement released by BYJU’S, it will be making significant investments in the latter’s technology platform. On the other hand, this acquisition will help BYJU’S to launch coding to children, which is certainly a fast-growing segment amongst the K-12 space.

Founded by former Discovery Networks India CEO Karan Bajaj, WhiteHat Jr is backed by Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network India and Owl Ventures. It has raised a little over $11 million across its seed and Series A rounds. And prior to BYJU’S, another leading online learning platform Unacademy had also made a bid to acquire WhiteHat Jr.

Does this acquisition signals towards a major transition in the education industry?

The merger of two big leaders of the online education sector certainly signifies toward a major change.  Adding to fuel the fire, are the current situations that the entire world is dealing with. The COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in schools to shut down all across the world. Hence, making over 1.2 billion children in 186 countries stay at home and out of the classroom. While nations are at different points in their COVID-19 infection rates, the school closures have affected the growth in the education sector.

Amidst these challenging situations, edtech apps like BYJU’s, Course Era, Khan Academy, Brain POP, Wonderschool, etc. are turning out to be a savior. The exponential rise in the numbers of monthly visitors to several education websites, after the lockdown was enforced in the month of March, proves the same.

Source: Statista

How online education apps are helping the world prepare for the ‘next normal’?

As per Statista, the Apple App Store had 470 million educational app downloads and Google Play store has 466 million educational app downloads. And these are their respective highest reported educational app downloads so far.

Source: Statista

While these apps are witnessing an increase in the number of downloads, these are helping the concept of e-learning become a part of the ‘next normal’. There is evidence that learning online is turning out to be more effective in a number of ways. As per research, on average students retain 25-60% more material when learning online as compared to the classroom. Definitely, the students are being able to learn faster online and e-learning helps saving their time too. Another report states that learning online takes 40-60% less time than in a traditional classroom setting.

Simply, the emergence and success of edtech apps are helping students learn at their own pace and accelerate through the concepts as per their choice.

Why do businesses & entrepreneurs need to invest in online education apps amidst COVID-19 outbreak?

The virus outspread has impacted all the lives in one or the other way. And the business world is not an exception. With a number of industries like travel & tourism affected drastically, the education industry is one of the few sectors where investment has not dried up. Thanks to technology, for making learning feasible for students and presenting a viable option to invest for the business owners and entrepreneurs.

Even before the pandemic spread, the education industry was seeking a boost in the adoption of technology in different forms. Do you know, the global edtech investments reached US$ 18.66 billion in 2019? Moreover, the overall market for online education is expected to reach $350 Billion by 2025. And as there has been a significant surge in usage of education apps since COVID-19, it is the best time to launch your own branded education app.

Having the right tech partner by your side, you can head-start with your idea of building an e-learning application. Our years of experience and expertise in helping numerous edtech startups make us a perfect choice for this purpose. Did you check for the detailed infographic stating things you can learn from Gradeup’s (an edtech startup) $7m fundraising?

In case, you need expert consultation for your online education app development idea, we’re more than happy to help. Get in touch with us today to transform your idea.