Indian education technology startup Byju's buys Osmo for $120 million
Firm says near future for education game company involves more content, lower cost
Indian education technology firm Byju's (officially known as Think and Learn Private Ltd) has announced it has acquired education gaming and app startup Osmo for $120 million.
TechCrunch reports that this acquisition follows a $540 million funding round for Byju's, which the company said at the time was specifically to chase international opportunities as the service globalizes outside of India and expands its English categories. Byju's is reportedly now worth nearly $4 billion.
Osmo, originally known as Tangible Play, is a startup that combines educational apps and games for iPad, iPhone, and Amazon Fire tablets with touchable educational toys, games, and other objects that work on tandem with the games for a unified experience.
With Osmo, Byju's plans to immediately up the brand's content offerings and lower the price of the hardware to make it more accessible to a wider audience.
"For us to grow, we need to invest in content," said Osmo CEO Pramod Sharma to TechCrunch. "We have a lot of ideas [and] have proven a set of interactions, [but] a lot can be expanded with more content and levels. We've proven this is a compelling platform for learning, and we are nowhere close to scaling it...our goal is to get it to every child."