India-based education giant Byju’s is acquiring California-based digital reading platform Epic for $500 million, according to an announcement. 

Epic describes itself as “the world’s leading digital reading platform for kids 12 and under.” Valued at $16.5 billion, Byju’s is an education tutoring app and boasts over 100 million students who use its platform.

The acquisition is designed to help Byju’s expand its U.S. footprint and give access to the two million teachers and 50 million children in Epic’s existing global user base, the announcement said. 

“Our partnership with Epic will enable us to create engaging and interactive reading and learning experiences for children globally,” Byju’s Founder and CEO Byju Raveendran said in a statement. “Our mission is to fuel curiosity and make students fall in love with learning. Knowing that Epic and its products are rooted in the same mission, it was a natural fit.”

The announcement says that Byju’s has aggressive plans for international and U.S. market expansion, adding that the acquisition will allow Byju’s to become a “natural part of America’s learning culture.”

Two years ago, Byju’s acquired U.S.-based Osmo, which integrated Osmo’s computer vision technology into Byju’s products to create a “magical hands on learning experience” combining digital and physical worlds, according to the announcement.

The acquisition was backed by General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Naspers, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and other investors.

Investment firm to acquire Teaching Strategies. Global investment firm KKR will acquire Teaching Strategies, a provider of curriculum, assessment, and family engagement tools for the early childhood market, from global growth investor Summit Partners, according to an announcement.

KKR is acquiring Teaching Strategies through its “core investments strategy,” which refers to deals that have a longer-term investment horizon. The deal follows investments by KKR in ed-tech companies Weld North, Education Perfect, OverDrive, Burning Glass and MasterD.

“Since our founding, Teaching Strategies has been steadfast in our mission of supporting educators and the children and families they serve through innovative resources and technologies,” Teaching Strategies CEO John Olsen said in a statement. “We are thrilled to have KKR join us on this mission and look forward to leveraging their global expertise to build on that commitment to children, educators and families.”

Teaching Strategies acquired social-emotional learning provider Al’s Pals and digital literature app FarFaria in March, after acquiring parent engagement tool ReadyRosie in 2019.

KKR partner Webster Chua in a statement said the firm is excited to support Teaching Strategies continue to advance early childhood education through “research-based, technology-enabled resources” that increase educators’ effectiveness among larger groups of students.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

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