Next Education buys IIT-B incubated InOpen for computer science product

Next Education will include Computer Masti - e-books to teach computer science in schools - in its in-house product NextBooks

Hyderabad-based Next Education has acquired Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B)-incubated startup InOpen Technologies for its K-12 computer science product Computer Masti, in an all-cash deal. 

Computer Masti, created jointly by IIT-B and InOpen, is a series of e-books to teach computer science in schools.

The company plans to enhance computer learning through the computer science curriculum which will be available across multiple platforms.

Rupesh Kumar Shah, CEO of InOpen said that the acquisition by Next Education will scale up Computer Masti and approximately three million students will use CS 101 (basics of computer science and programming) by July 2017. 

Post the acquisition, all InOpen employees will move to Next Education. Shah is planning to take a break and may look at mentoring startups.

InOpen was incubated in Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), IIT Bombay in 2009 and was co-founded by Prof. Sridhar Iyer and Rupesh Kumar Shah. It started with a seed capital of Rs 25 lakh and received a boost after State Bank of India lent Rs 50 lakh without any collateral in August 2010. Meanwhile, VenturEast invested $500,000 later. 

Beas Dev Ralhan, co-founder and CEO of Next Education said, “Computer Masti adds to our portfolio and enables us to maintain our position as India’s most innovative education products company.”

Through this strategic move, Next Education aims to ensure better integration between NextBooks and computer science. As part of this deal, InOpen’s talent pool will also merge into Next Education's 2,000-strong team.

Computer Masti is a core computer science curriculum developed after intense research. It focuses on building life skills through computer science by emphasizing underlying concepts and not merely software-specific skills.

Next Education will include Computer Masti books in its in-house product NextBooks to cater to schools for their computer science curriculum. NextBooks is a series of curriculum books for the pre-primary and primary school years. 

These are integrated with the TeachNext (a digital learning ecosystem) learning platform and use different learning styles, namely audio, visual and kinesthetic, in order to enhance student's understanding of concepts.

All programmes and content are presented in a narrative format where colourful pictures, worksheets and interactive lessons are an inherent part of the textbook for each level. The lessons are based on free and open source software. 

Founded in 2007, Next Education has catered to more than 7,000,000 students studying in their 7,000-plus partner schools. It is a technology-driven company creating products for the education sector aimed at making learning and teaching easier, more fun, and more effective.

They have 10,000 learning modules that account for more than 1,000 hours of classroom teaching at school and junior college levels to our credit.

“Next Education has an awesome team as well as the largest reach in the country and this deal will accelerate our efforts in computer science education. We have had some really awesome people and institutions, like IIT Bombay who invested in us and backed us each and every time we needed them,” he explained.

InOpen shareholders included Shridhar Shukla of GS Labs, Ventureast, Japanese education giant Benesse and Society of Entrepreneurship India’s most prestigious incubator SINE IIT Bombay.

Kamath Raveendranath, CFO and Co-founder, Next Education explained that computer science is much sought after, and Computer Masti, being the best in the business, made it a perfect fit for them. 

Within three years of operation, it had achieved profits and had also seen a good jump in revenues every year.  InOpen had also acquired a science content called Small Science’ from the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. However, this will not be continued under Next Education.