Byju's in talks with lenders for $1 billion to fund acquisition plans

Byju’s, India’s most valuable startup, is in talks with lenders to raise more than $1 billion in acquisition financing as the online education provider looks to expand its business rapidly, people familiar with the matter said.

The Bangalore-based market leader is in talks with banks, including Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., for the funding to acquire another edtech company, the people said, asking not to be named as the information is not public. They didn’t disclose details of the acquisition target and said that the terms of the transaction and the funding are yet to be finalized.

Byju’s, led by former teacher Byju Raveendran, has been on a shopping binge in the US and elsewhere in recent years and bought out startups offering coding lessons, professional learning courses, and test prep classes for competitive Indian exams. The startup was valued at $22 billion with fund raising this year and is working on its initial public offering plans, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.

Representatives for Byju’s and JPMorgan declined to comment about the financing. Morgan Stanley representative didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The platform’s app has been downloaded more than 150 million times and on average, customers spend an average71 minutes the app every day, according to information available on its website. The company formally called Think & Learn Pvt. education, has prominent global investors, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Naspers Ltd., Tiger Global Management, and Sequoia Capital India.

The popularity of online classes had soared in the country of almost 1.4 billion people with one of the world’s youngest population after schools and tutoring centers were forced to shut their doors during the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing parents, teachers and students to look for alternative learning resources. Byju’s has also expanded its product portfolio to include one-to-one learning with teachers in India and elsewhere tutoring school children across the globe in countries including US, UK, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Australia.