Indian edtech company Vedantu acquires a majority stake in test prep platform for $40 mn

Indian edtech firm Vedantu announced that it has acquired a majority stake in test preparation platform Ace Creative Learning aka Deeksha for $40 million (Rs 330 crore). 
 
With this investment, Deeksha will bring in close to 13,000 of its students to Vedantu's platform. In addition, it will also leverage the edtech unicorn’s already existing live classes, educational technology, and pedagogical content.
 
“Together Vedantu and Deeksha will revolutionize the way education is imparted, improve the quality of the learning system as a whole, and help students to achieve their true potential with outstanding learning outcomes,” the company said in a statement.
 
The company’s CEO and co-founder, Vamsi Krishna also highlighted that the acquisition will help the company expand its hybrid business model with access to about 40 offline centres that the Deeksha operates in three states of Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
 
As part of the deal, Deeksha, which has around 950 employees, will continue to operate as an independent entity and existing founders will run the operations.
 
Deeksha was started in 1988 by Dr Sridhar G and Lalit Sridhar. From a single classroom it has grown to 20 campuses across three states in the country including Karnataka, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh. The Bengaluru-based business claims that over 60,000 children have passed through the system.
 
Vedantu which was launched in 2014 offers individual and group classes across K-12 and test preparation segments. It is the fifth edtech start-up to gain the unicorn status.

(With inputs from other agencies)