Epic books reading series#

They understand this demographic very well,” he said.Įarlier this year, Byju’s rebranded its international business as Byju’s Future School, as part of which it is offering coding and math in synchronous and asynchronous formats to students, and plans to add music, English, fine arts and science to the catalog. and reach a demographic that we have also been working to serve. “The distribution they have will also help us offer more options to students in the U.S. The addition of Epic to Byju’s offerings is “complementary from a product standpoint, as reading is a very powerful format for students to learn,” he said. that the startup has been looking for, said Raveendran. expansionįor Byju’s, the new product expands its current portfolio and brings expertise about a demographic of the U.S. They first met with Byju Raveendran, co-founder and chief executive of the eponymous Indian startup, four or five years ago, but conversations about an acquisition only began this year, they said. Donahue and Markosian are no strangers to Byju’s. TechCrunch reported in March that Byju’s was in talks to acquire Epic. In a Netflix-esque move, the firm has also started to release several print versions of its own original titles. The platform, which has a presence across 90% of elementary schools in the U.S., has amassed more than 2 million teachers and 50 million kids (up from 20 million last year).Įpic, which counts Evolution Media as an early backer, collects and analyzes real-time anonymized and aggregated data on how many children read a book, how deeply they engage with it and where their interest starts to wane. The deal involves both cash and stock, and Epic founders Kevin Donahue and Suren Markosian will continue to run the business, they said in an interview with TechCrunch.Įpic operates an eponymous digital reading platform for kids aged 12 or younger.

Epic books reading series#

Byju’s said on Wednesday it has acquired California-headquartered reading platform Epic for $500 million, the latest in a series of moves from India’s most valuable startup as it deepens its footprint in the U.S.