Hyderabad Based Next Education Acquires InOpen Technologies

Hyderabad-based digital education provider, Next Education, has acquired IIT Bombay-incubated startup InOpen Technologies for its K-12 computer science product Computer Masti, in an all-cash deal. Computer Masti was created jointly by IIT-B and InOpen.

Computer Masti is a core computer science curriculum that focuses on building life skills through computer science by emphasising underlying concepts and not merely software-specific skills.

Rupesh Kumar Shah, CEO of InOpen said, “The acquisition by Next Education will scale Computer Masti, and approximately 3 Mn students will use CS 101 by July 2017. I believe that it’s the largest computer science focused implementation in India.”

InOpen was co-founded by Sridhar Iyer and Rupesh Kumar Shah in 2009. It is a IIT Bombay based educational startup with focus on developing high quality academic content through deep research. The company offers products and services to private and public schools.

Currently, it is serving more than 6,00,000 students directly through our products.

InOpen had raised seed capital of INR 25 lakh in its early days, and got a boost when State Bank of India lent INR 50 lakh without any collateral in August 2010, while venture capital fund VenturEast invested $500K later.

After the acquisition, all InOpen employees will move to Next Education. As for Rupesh Kumar Shah, he will not be joining the firm. Iyer will engage with Next Education to advise on the content.

Beas Dev Ralhan, Co-founder and CEO of Next Education said, “Computer Science Education is an integral part of School Education. InOpen has built a wonderful product from scratch in association with IIT Bombay and have built a strong foundation of CS Education in India. Such strategic acquisitions give us an opportunity for exponential growth while maintaining our core values.”

Founded in 2007, Next Education, has catered to more than 7 Mn students studying in their 7,000-plus partner schools. Next Education covers seven Indian languages and the syllabuses of CBSE, ICSE, Army and all state boards.

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