Guess who just got acquired? Surprise! It's Vietnamese edtech Schola. They've just been acquired by Indian edtech BrightChamps in a $15M cash and stock deal.

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🏆 The big-time buyer

Founded in 2020, BrightChamps is valued at a massive $650M and has expanded to over 30 countries in just two years.

• Big numbers and growing fast. They hit $10M in annual recurring revenue in less than ten months.

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📚 Get schooled on Schola

Founded in 2019, they teach live one-on-one and group classes on English and STEM to kids 4-15 live online.

• Investors? They raised seed funding from 500 Global in 2019.
• They've grown 3x in the past year and have been profitable.
• They have students in 12 countries, but their main markets are Vietnam and Thailand.

Money matters. They monetize through charging for courses that can cost from $30 for six classes. $1,600 for 240 classes (we know, that's a big jump from six to 240!).

• They're flexible, and students can take these classes at their own pace.

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😉 The big picture

BrightChamps is all about teaching future-ready skills for the modern world. They focus on teaching tech skills (no, not MS word and Excel) like programming, design thinking and financial literacy through online classes.

Where have you been all my life? Schola's focused on life skills too, but they focus on another aspect: communication — making them the missing piece BrightChamps needs. Match made in heaven? BrightChamps thinks so too. 💍

• Schola now also teaches effective communication, confidence-building, presentation, public speaking and other life skills in English to more advanced learners.

Post-acquisition plans. Schola will run independently as part of BrightChamps, but internal functions and platforms like finance, HR, tech and legal will be streamlined.

• BrightChamps' goal is to take Schola's growth rate to 500% by the end of the financial year.

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🤩 You could be next

Schola is BrightChamps' first acquisition with the $100M they've set aside for international acquisitions that they plan to make by March 2023.

• They're looking for companies they can use to deepen penetration in certain markets, jump into new verticals or tap into a similar user base.
• Capacity? They can acquire around 4-5 more companies of a similar size to Schola.