BYJU’s Acquires Coding Startup Tynker For About $200 Mn In US Expansion Drive

Keeping its acquisition streak alive, edtech giant BYJU’s has acquired US-based coding platform Tynker. As per Inc42 sources, Byju Raveendran led edtech decacorn has acquired Tynker for around $200 Mn. As part of the deal, Tynker’s founder Krishna Vedati, Srinivas Mandyam and Kelvin Chong will remain in their roles and will continue carrying Tynker’s day to day operations. 

Founded in 2012, Tynker is a K-12 creative coding platform that enables students to develop coding skills to design and power animations, games, music, robots and drones, smart devices, virtual worlds and more. The startup claims that its coding curriculum has been used by one in three K-8 schools in the US, 100,000 schools globally, and over 60 million kids across 150 countries. 

This will be BYJU’s third acquisition of a US-based startup after Osmo and online reading platform Epic. The recent development is in line with BYJU’s ambition of investing in $1 Bn in North America. 

This will be the ninth acquisition of BYJU’s after it acquired Aakash, Epic Games, Gradeup among others. The edtech decacron has already burnt $2.4 Bn for its acquisition. 

BYJU’s earlier 2021 acquisitions: 

• It acquired Aakash Educational Services for close to $1 Bn in April this year
• The edtech giant acquired US-based digital reading platform Epic Games in July for $500 Mn
• BYJU’s acquired Mumbai-based Toppr for around $150 Mn
• To strengthen its offerings in professional and higher education segment, it acquired Great Learning for $600 Mn
• It acquired on demand tutoring app HashLearn in May 
• BYJU’s acquired doubt solving platform Scholr
• The edtech giant acquired AR-startup Whodat
• It recently acquired exam-preparing platform GradeUp

It is worth noting that BYJU’s had in 2020 acquired major Indian kids code learning platform WhiteHat Jr for a record $300 Mn. 

When asked how WhiteHat Jr and now Tynker are going to help BYJU’s cement its position in the growing edtech space, BYJU’S chief strategy officer, Anita Kishore, told Inc42: “The format and the offerings are complementary to each other on both the platforms. There is a live teacher teaching Maths and coding on Whitehat Jr while kids can learn on their own on Tynker, continuing to build and create what they like to do. This will help them realise their dreams in their future goals”.

‘A large base of users are already engaged with Tynker and as we scale in global markets, we will integrate our product offerings with Tynker as well,” she added.

Krishna Vedati, co-founder and CEO of Tynker, said their focus is on understanding what kids are passionate about – whether that’s building games, making animations or modding Minecraft – and we then create specific experiences, apps and personalised learning paths to empower them to create with code. 

BYJU’s, which started in 2011, is at present the most valued Indian startup with $16.8 Bn and is likely to go public early next year. The startup is backed by marquee investors such as Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, and others. It claims to have over 100 Mn students on its platform.

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