Consolidation continues to headline the edtech market in India. Now Tiger Global-backed online tutoring platform Vedantu has joined the likes of Unacademy and Byju’s to explore the inorganic route. The company has acquired the Q&A platform Instasolv for an undisclosed sum. The startup focused on solving doubts for students from Class 6 to 12 for science, mathematics, IITJEE, and NEET and had raised $2 million in its pre-Series A funding round from Vedantu. Extending its strategic investment in Instasolv to a complete buyout marked Vedantu’s growing focus into Tier-II and Tier-III towns to solve the challenge of providing access to quality teachers and doubt solving for students.
“Last year we took a strategic decision to invest in Instasolv to strengthen our play in doubt-solving, which is one of the key aspects of learning online. We have seen tremendous potential in Instasolv and share the same mission to democratize education in the country,” said Vamsi Krishna, CEO, and Co-Founder, Vedantu in a company statement. The company claimed to deliver 75 million hours of classes across its platform and with 6.3 million students attending live classes in 2020. With the acquisition, Instasolv brought nearly 1 million of its potential active learners to Vedantu’s platform. The company currently has nearly 20 million Q&A in its database.
SoftBank and Facebook-backed Unacademy has been the most prolific acquirer of edtech startup in the recent past. The company bought five startups last year and had acquired another startup professional networking platform TapChief last week at a valuation of Rs 100 crore. The company had turned unicorn in September last year with a $150-million investment led by SoftBank amid Covid-induced growth in the edtech market and currently competes with Byju’s, Toppr, Vedantu, etc. India’s largest edtech company Byju’s had acquired coding startup WhiteHat Jr. in August last year and virtual simulations startup LabInApp in September. It had signed a deal to acquire Aakash Education Services in January and had recently bought personalized coaching app for students Scholr.
