Tag: Asia

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India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications

India may have plans to follow France’s footsteps in building a chat app and requiring government employees to use it for official communications.

The New Delhi government is said to be pondering about the need to have homegrown email and chat apps, local news outlet Economic Times reported on Thursday.

The rationale behind the move is to cut reliance on foreign entities, the report said, a concern that has somehow manifested amid U.S.’s ongoing tussle with Huawei and China.

“We need to make our communication insular,” an unnamed top government official was quoted as saying by the paper. The person suggested that by putting Chinese giant Huawei on the entity list, the U.S. has “set alarm bells ringing in New Delhi.”

India has its own ongoing trade tension with the U.S. Donald Trump earlier this month removed the South Asian nation from a special trade program after India did not assure him that it will “provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets.” India called the move “unfortunate”, and weeks later, increased tariffs on some U.S. exports.

The move to step away from foreign communication apps, if it comes to fruition, won’t be the first time a nation has attempted to cautiously restrict usage of popular messaging apps run by foreign players in government offices.

France launched an encrypted chat app — called Tchap — for use in government offices earlier this year. Only those employed by the French government offices can sign up to use the service, though the nation has open sourced the app’s code for the world to see and audit.

Of course, a security flaw in Tchap came into light within the first 24 hours of its release. Security is a real challenge that the government would have to tackle and it might not have the best resources — talent, budget, and expertise — to deal with it.

China, which has restricted many foreign companies from operating in the nation, also maintains customized versions of popular operating systems for use in government offices. So does North Korea.

It won’t be an unprecedented step for India, either. The nation has been trying to build and scale its own Linux-based desktop operating system called BOSS for several years with little success as most government agencies continue to use Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Even as India has emerged as the third-largest startup hub in the world, the country has failed to build local alternatives for many popular services. Facebook’s WhatsApp has become ubiquitous for communication in India, while Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows power most smartphones and computers in the nation.

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Warburg Pincus announces new $4.25 billion fund for China and Southeast Asia

Warburg Pincus, the private equity fund with over $60 billion under management, is doubling down on Asia after it announced a $4.25 billion fund dedicated to China and Southeast Asia.

The firm has been present in China for 25 years, and it has invested over $11 billion in a portfolio of over 120 startups that includes the likes of Alibaba’s Ant Financial and listed companies NIO (a Tesla rival), ZTO Express (a courier firm)among others. The new fund will work in tandem with the firm’s $14.8 billion global growth fund which was finalized at the end of last year.

What’s particularly interesting about the new fund is that it has expanded to include Southeast Asia, where internet adoption is rapidly expanding among 600 million consumers, for the first time. It is the successor to Warburg Pincus’ previous $2.2 billion ‘China’ fund and, with the addition of Southeast Asia, it’ll aim to build on initial investments in the region that have included Go-Jek in Indonesia (although it is going regional) and Vietnamese digital payment startup Momo from its Singapore office.

Indeed, the firm’s head of Southeast Asia — Jeff Perlman — said in a statement that Southeast Asia is “exhibiting many of the strong investment themes and trends which have driven our China business over the last 25 years.”

While there is plenty of uncertainty around China, and more widely Asia, due to the ongoing trade battle with the U.S. — which has ensnared Huawei and other tech firms — Warburg Pincus said it had received strong demand for LPs whilst out raising this new fund.

Though it declined to provide details of its backers — and you’d wager that few, if any, are U.S-based — it said it surpassed its initial target of $3.5 billion for the China-Southeast Asia fund. That’s despite evidence suggesting that China’s investment space is experiencing a slowdown in total funding raised despite more deals.

In terms of target investments, the firm said it intends to focus on areas including consumer and services, healthcare, real estate, financial services and TMT — technology, media and telecommunications.

Warburg Pincus is already one of the largest investors in Southeast Asia in terms of potential check size, although it has been fairly selective on deals at this point. The fund’s move to include the region alongside will be a boon for companies looking for growth-stage deals that are hard to find in the current venture capital ecosystem.

More broadly, it is also a major endorsement for Southeast Asia as a startup destination. The region has long been seen as having immense growth potential, but it often sits in the shadows of more mature regions like India and China.

Warburg isn’t alone in grouping Southeast Asia with another region. Sequoia’s India fund reaches into Southeast Asia — alongside its recently-launched accelerate program — as does the most recent fund from Vertex Ventures.

On the other side, a number of Chinese funds are increasingly doing deals in the region and setting up shop in Singapore. Those include GGV which has backed startups like fintech company Thunes, Ant Financial-backed fund BAce Capital and ATM Capital, which helps Chinese companies expand into and localize in Southeast Asia.

Google report: Southeast Asia’s digital economy to triple to $240 billion by 2025

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Pinduoduo cements position as China’s second-largest ecommerce player

Alibaba and JD.com have been in a war over the Chinese e-commerce space for a decade or so, but a third player called Pinduoduo has managed to shake up the duopoly in recent times. The startup, which was founded in 2015 by an ex-Googler and went public on the Nasdaq last July, has further flexed muscles during the recent “6/18” shopping spree.

According to data provider QuestMobile, Pinduoduo’s daily active users have outnumbered JD’s for at least the past 12 months, and it came out of the mid-year sales festival — first popularized by JD as a counterpart to archrival Alibaba’s “11/11” shopping day — with 135 million DAUs.

JD, in comparison, ended with 88 million DAUs and Alibaba’s Taobao retained its top spot at 299 million. That result further solidified Pinduoduo’s position as China’s second-biggest ecommerce company by number of users.

The boom of Pinduoduo is in part attributable to ties with its investor Tencent — also a backer of JD — which enables it to sell via WeChat’s lite app and tap the giant’s vast social network. Alibaba, on the other hand, has for years been prevented from selling through WeChat.

In terms of sales, Pinduoduo still remains some miles behind JD, which focuses on large-ticket items like home appliances and targets China’s urban, deep-pocketed shoppers. Pinduoduo took a more rural tack and has built a reputation for hawking ultra-cheap goods at small-city consumers.

In 2018, Pinduoduo racked up 471.6 billion yuan ($68.6 billion) in gross merchandise volume, a somewhat problematic term for gauging sales as it totals the value of orders placed, regardless of whether they are actually sold, delivered or returned. (Alibaba stopped revealing GMV a few years ago.) JD’s GMV was almost four times that of Pinduoduo at 1.68 trillion yuan ($243.9 billion) last year.

One has to keep in mind that JD is a 21-year-old firm born out of the PC era, whereas Pinduoduo has been up and running on mobile for less than four years. The startup’s continued growth is undeniable. In a March report, investment bank UBS’s Evidence Lab predicted that Pinduoduo could overtake JD in GMV as early as 2021.

But Pinduoduo’s story is not all roses. Currently trading at $20.54, its stock has plunged about 35 percent since a March high. The online marketplace has also been chided for selling counterfeits and subpar goods, an endemic problem that’s long plagued Chinese e-commerce. This year Pinduoduo was put on the U.S. government’s “notorious” blacklist alongside rival Alibaba for selling fakes, while the company claims it’s actively working to root out problematic listings.

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Songtrust adds another 55,000 artists to its rights management service

Over the past year, Songtrust has added another 55,000 artists to its rights management service.

The company, a subsidiary of Downtown Music Publishing, a publishing and rights management firm that manages rights for artists such as John Lennon, One Direction and Santigold, now has 205,000 artists on its roster and has 2 million songs it tracks.

The company has also opened three offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Nashville to complement existing locations in New York, London and Amsterdam.

The company’s growth follows that of a music industry that continues to enjoy a renaissance (at least in terms of dollars spent).

Songtrust has signed up over 150,000 songwriters for royalties management

The global recorded music market grew 9.7% in 2018 to $19.1 billion, according to data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (which has been tracking the industry since the days when the dominant technology was the record player).

Much of that growth is now coming from streaming, the IFPI reports, with streaming revenues growing 34% year over year and accounting for 47% of total revenue thanks to paid subscription services. There were 255 million users of paid services by the end of 2018 — and Songtrust can attribute much of its growth to the opacity in how that money makes its way back to artists.

Increasingly, those artists are having to track their performance in international markets as well. Latin America continues to be the fastest gorwing region for music consumption, followed by Asia and Australasia. Most of that growth is due to K-Pop, since South Korea accounts for 17.9% growth in money spent alone.

All of this movement shows no sign of abating, according to the bankers that track these kinds of things. Goldman Sachs recently projected that the industry could grow to over $130 billion in revenue over the next decade.

 

 

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Splyt wants to connect the world’s ride-hailing apps for easy international roaming

The vision of a universal global ride-hailing service is over. Uber’s decision to exit markets like China, Southeast Asia and Russia coupled with the failure of its rivals to develop a proposed roaming system, means that global travelers must install multiple apps if they are to take advantage of on-demand taxis. That’s unless a little-known startup can turn a bold plan into reality.

In the world of ride-hailing and its billion-dollar investment checks, an $8 million capital raise may not be a big deal but it does represent a coming-out for Splyt, a UK-based startup that is aiming to help make global ride-hailing roaming a reality — and not just within ride-hailing apps.

The four-year-old company announced this week that it closed an $8 million Series A round from a range of undisclosed (and existing) family offices and angel investors. In addition, the round included participation from Southeast Asian ride-hailing company Grab, the firm valued at $14 billion which acquired Uber’s regional business last year.

The deal will see Grab become a Splyt partner and it comes hot-on-the-heels of a similar rollout with Alipay, the digital wallet app run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial.

In both cases, Splyt is hooking Alipay and Grab up to its ride-hailing networks to allow users to book (and take) a taxi from another provider within the Alipay or Grab app.

Splyt allows users of Alipay to book taxis on the Grab network in Southeast Asia without downloading Grab’s app

The integration is already live within Alipay for Southeast Asia — Grab is scheduled to work overseas from early 2020 — and it means that users can book and manage rides directly from the payment app thanks to Splyt’s system. In other words, Alipay users can take rides through Grab without having to download the Grab app.

Splyt is not visible to the consumer’s eye. Instead, it lurks behind the scenes acting as the interconnecting services. In that respect, it is much like digital banking services that provide the infrastructure that enables banks to offer digital services. In Splyt’s case, it provides connections for ride-hailing services outside of their markets, but beyond them it allows other apps to access ride-hailing booking features, too.

Relationships are the key part of this offering, beyond Grab and Alipay, Splyt has partnerships with Chinese travel app Ctrip, Careem — the Middle East-based service being acquired by Uber — Gett and car rental service Cartrawler, which added ride-hailing via the tie-up.

“There’s a long way to go to get comfortable with where we are and how close we are to our vision,” Splyt CEO Philipp Mintchin said, admitting that the goal is for all major ride-hailing firms to join.

That said, the existing partner base already gives Splyt reach into some 2,000 cities. The deal with Grab, in particular, will help allow Alipay and Ctrip — two popular services — to open up ride-hailing in Southeast Asia, a region that is an increasingly popular travel destination for Chinese tourists.

Indeed, such is the focus on Asia at this point that Splyt has opened an office in Singapore. Mintchin told TechCrunch that he expects headcount in Singapore will reach 15 this year, mostly on the tech side, while overall the company is predicted to grow to 50 people by the end of this year.

“Most of our business and partners are based out of Asia,” he added of the new office.

Splyt Team

The Splyt Team at the company’s office in London

While connecting ride-hailing services and popular apps makes absolute sense for consumers who can enjoy the convenience of roaming, navigating and securing partnerships is not straightforward in today’s ride-hailing world. Aside from a network of complicated relationships — Uber and Didi, in particular, are investors in many competing services and each other — many companies are also developing new features behind simply taxis.

Mintchin declined to discuss potential deals but he did tease that Splyt is working to onboard a number of new partners this year.

“In this industry, everyone is talking to everyone,” he said of the partnership push.

Mintchin admitted that the “politics of the ride-hailing industry” mean that some companies refuse to work with others — no names named, alas — and others prefer to work with specific firms, too. Then there’s also an element of trust involved with giving a third party access to a service which ends up being used by yet another third party.

“We are here to partner and benefit each other rather than to try to steal a fleet and run our own app,” he said of Splyt’s neutral position and its role as the behind-the-scenes integrator. “We are not all of a sudden going to influence the partners we work with… the partners make decisions.”

It’s a patient game, but already Splyt is seeing growth double on a weekly basis since May. In some areas, Mintchin said that the service is seeing a 90 percent repeat use through its partners. Going forward, he added, the Series A funding will go towards closing those supply gaps to make the service more usable in more locations.

It’s an audacious vision but, given the balkanization of the industry in recent years, it remains the best hope that travelers have of delivering on the vision of using their favorite ride-hailing app anywhere in the world.

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Huawei says two-thirds of 5G networks outside China now use its gear

As 5G networks begin rolling out and commercializing around the world, telecoms vendors are rushing to get a headstart. Huawei equipment is now behind two-thirds of the commercially launched 5G networks outside China, said president of Huawei’s carrier business group Ryan Ding on Tuesday at an industry conference.

Huawei, the world’s largest maker of telecoms gear, has nabbed 50 commercial 5G contracts outside its home base from countries including South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Finland and more. In all, the Shenzhen-based firm has shipped more than 150,000 base stations, according to Ding.

It’s worth noting that network carriers can work with more than one providers to deploy different parts of their 5G base stations. Huawei offers what it calls an end-to-end network solution or a full system of hardware, but whether a carrier plans to buy from multiple suppliers is contingent on their needs and local regulations, a Huawei spokesperson told TechCrunch.

In China, for instance, both Ericsson and Nokia have secured 5G contracts from state-run carrier China Mobile (although Nokia’s Chinese entity, a joint venture with Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell, is directly controlled by China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission).

Huawei’s handsome number of deals came despite the U.S’s ongoing effort to lobby its allies against using its equipment. In May, the Trump administration put Huawei on a trade blacklist over concerns around the firm’s spying capabilities, a move that has effectively banned U.S. companies from doing businesses with the Shenzhen-based giant.

Huawei’s overall share in the U.S. telecoms market has so far been negligible, but many rural carriers have long depended on its high-performing, cost-saving hardware. That might soon end as the U.S. pressures small-town network operators to quit buying from Huawei, Reuters reported this week.

To appease potential clients, Huawei has gone around the world offering no-backdoors pacts to local governments of the U.K. and most recently India.

Huawei is in a neck and neck fight with rivals Nokia and Ericsson. In early June, Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said in an interview with Bloomberg that the firm had won “two-thirds of the time” in bidding contracts against Ericcson and competed “quite favorably with Huawei.” Nokia at the time landed 42 5G contracts, while Huawei numbered 40 and Ericsson scored 19.

Huawei’s challenges go well beyond the realm of its carrier business. Its fast-growing smartphone unit is also getting the heat as the U.S. ban threatens to cut it off from Alphabet, whose Android operating system is used in Huawei phone, as well as a range of big chip suppliers.

Huawei CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei noted that trade restrictions may compromise the firm’s output in the short term. Total revenues are expected to dip $30 billion below estimates over the next two years, and overseas smartphone shipment faces a 40% plunge. Ren, however, is bullish that the firm’s sales would bounce back after a temporary period of adjustment while it works towards self-dependence by developing its own OS, chips and other core technologies.

Huawei says US ban will cost it $30B in lost revenue

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Indonesia’s Kopi Kenangan raises a sweet $20M to expand its coffee business

Kopi Kenangan, a startup that wants to make quality, fresh coffee affordable to Indonesian consumers, has raised $20 million as it begins to consider overseas expansion in Southeast Asia.

The round comes courtesy of Sequoia India and Southeast Asia, via the $695 million investment fund it closed last year. Kopi Kenangan previously raised $8 million from Alpha JWC Ventures.

Started in 2017 by Edward Tirtanata and James Prananto, the company aims to bridge the gap between cheap street vendor coffee and drinks priced at the higher end of the spectrum from international chains such as Starbucks — the ‘sweet spot,’ you might say. That delta is a major reason why Indonesia, which is the world’s fourth-largest coffee exporter, has Southeast Asia’s lowest coffee consumption per person, Tirtanata argued.

Kopi Kenangan is also unashamedly local. Rather than lattes, mochas or flat whites, its top-selling drink is ‘Es Kopi Kenangan Mantan,’ a sweet Indonesian coffee that uses palm sugar, among other local Southeast Asian beverages. Ingredients are sourced locally, including four different coffee blends from across the country and organic palm sugar. Tirtanata told TechCrunch that the raw materials aren’t cheap, but they are essential for a “customer-first” company.

Already, Kopi Kenangan has an impressive retail footprint, including 80 stores across eight cities. The company makes use on-demand services like Go-Jek (GoFood) and Grab (GrabFood) which account for one-third of all orders, according to Tirtanata, rather than running its out fleet as some competitors.

Impressively, the business is profitable thanks to a managed inventory and a focus on waste that sees neighboring branches share resources. Tirtanata said that keeping the business sustainable is a key focus even though it is now flush with new capital.

With this new funding under its belt, the company is eying significant expansion both nationally and internationally. Tirtanata said the plan is to reach 500 stores by next year, which, he claimed, will include locations in two overseas markets. He declined to name them, but did reveal that hiring is already underway in both countries.

As well as growing its commercial footprint, Kopi Kenangan will use the capital to build out its logistics to support the projected rise in business. (It claims to sell “close to” one million cups of coffee per month, up from 175,000 cups in October.)

Chief on the list is logistics to track coffee supplies and shipments — Tirtanata admitted it’s natural that there will occasionally be some beans that are sub-standard, and this will help root them out — using RFID and other tech. The startup’s development team is also poised to work on a new internet-of-things feature, details of which will come later, and improvements to the Kopi Kenangan apps and digital service.

Unlike newer competitors like Fore Coffee, which takes its cues from China’s Luckin by placing emphasis on digital delivery, Kopi Kenangan is content to use third-party on-demand apps and its own ‘new retail’ experience. Its app enables customers to pre-order coffee for collection at their nearest branch. If they are in an unfamiliar location, it will guide them to the store.

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India’s Open ‘neo-bank’ raises $30 million to help businesses automate their finances

Open, a Bangalore-based startup that operates a “neo-bank” to help businesses automate and run their finances, has bagged $30 million in a new funding round as investors look to replicate a globally tried and tested business idea in emerging markets.

The Series B financing round for the two-year-old startup was led by Tiger Global with Tanglin Venture Partners Advisors and existing investors 3one4 Capital, Speedinvest, BetterCapital AngelList Syndicate also participating in it. The new round valued Open at $150 million, a person familiar with the matter said. The startup has raised about $37 million to date.

Open operates as a neo-bank that offers nearly all the features of the bank with additional tools to serve the needs of a business. Millions of small and medium sized businesses in India struggle with maintaining multiple bank accounts, bookkeeping of their daily spending, and bandying out payments to employees.

Open offers them a platform that automates much of this task. It lets them keep track of each transaction — who it came from, where it is going, and what sales it made across accounts.

“We have a small business owner from Ahmedabad on our platform. They see 59 transactions from their customers in its bank account every few hours. Prior to using our service, they were juggling all day to figure out where these transactions originated from or went to,” he explained. “Because on their bank statement, they only see one-line description of a transaction’s detail.”

Traditional banks have either not addressed these small needs, or charge huge amount for their own solutions that is not feasible for a small business, he added.

The startup says it already has over 100,000 customers, with as many as 20,000 coming onboard each month of late. It processes about $3.5 billion in transactions each year.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Anish Achuthan, founder and CEO of Open, said the startup saw an opportunity to serve the businesses and wanted to open a better bank. “But building a bank in India comes with its own set of regulatory challenges, so we looked at what fintech startups were doing in other parts of the world for inspiration,” he said.

And it found that inspiration quickly enough. One of its early investors is Speedinvest, which has funded Tide and N26 ‘neo-banks’ in European markets. In India, Open has partnered with ICICI Bank, one of the biggest banks in the nation, for creation of accounts. On ICICI Bank’s internet banking website, Open has integrated its tools including a payment gateway, Achuthan explained.

Achuthan said the startup will use the fresh capital to significantly expand its business — build more products, and sign up more customers. Open will soon also launch Open+ card, a business credit card with a 30-day interest-free credit line for venture backed startups, and Layer, a programmable bank account for developers.

Open raised its Series A of $5 million earlier this year. When asked if it’s a very capital intensive business, Achuthan said they needed the money to get a first-mover advantage. The startup was in talks with another investor to raise an additional $20 million, but Achuthan said they did not need that much money at this stage.

Open today competes with a handful of startups including InstantPay, but Achuthan said much of the market remains untapped.

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Indonesia’s KoinWorks raises $12 million to grow its P2P SME lending platform

KoinWorks, an Indonesian startup that helps small and medium-sized businesses secure financial services through its online peer-to-peer platform, has raised $16.5 million SGD ($12 million USD) in a new funding round as money continues to flow in what has become a hot space for investors.

The Series B round for the three-year-old startup was led by EV Growth and Quona Capital . Existing investors — Mandiri Capital Indonesia, Convergence Ventures, Gunung Sewu, Beeblebrox and Quona Capital — also participated in the round, the startup said in a statement. The new round means KoinWorks has raised more than $28.5 million to date.

SMEs have historically struggled with securing loan and other financial services from banks — creating a big opportunity for middlemen lending platforms. KoinWorks operates an online platform that uses machine learning to provide low interest loans to these small and medium sized enterprises. It identifies the businesses that are eligible to make the return eventually and connects them with lenders.

The platform has amassed more than 300,000 users, it claimed. More than 60% of the lenders are millennials and for 70%, it is their first time investment. Willy Arifin, a founder and CEO of KoinWorks said the startup aims to “democratize finance in Indonesia while fostering financial inclusion.”

Surprisingly, KoinWorks raised a bigger amount — $16.5 million (USD) in its Series A round in the second half of last year. Arifin insisted that the round was intentionally oversubscribed, suggesting that the existing shareholders of the startup were unwilling to overly dilute their stake. The new round “does not reflect the true appetite of investors in KoinWorks,” he added.

KoinWorks competes with a number of local startups including Akseleran, Investree, Reksadana, Amartha, and Modalku. It also fights with Funding Societies, which received $25 million last year to expand its business in several Southeast Asian markets. Soon, it will have a new competitor in Validus Capital, which raised $15 million earlier this year and announced its plan to enter Indonesia this quarter.

The new round comes at a time when Indonesia is pushing strict regulatory changes for peer-to-peer lending businesses in an attempt to ensure that the chaos in China does not seep into Indonesia.

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Byju’s-owned Osmo education startup enters pre-schoolers market

Osmo, a Palo Alto-based education startup acquired by Indian unicorn Byju’s for $120 million this year, is expanding its product lineup to serve a new and largely untapped market: pre-schoolers.

Osmo today announced Osmo Little Genius Starter Kit, a set of tools that aims to help children that have yet to enter schools to understand letters, expand their vocabulary, and build motor and social skills. The kit is priced at $79 and is available through Amazon, Target, and Apple stores in the U.S.

The kit provides children with sticks and rings of varying shapes, tasking them to assemble them to mimic objects and words that they see through video instructions on an accompanying tablet. Osmo claims its kit for pre-schoolers is based on Friedrich Froebel’s and Maria Montessori’s manipulative with advanced computer vision for a personalized experience.

Pramod Sharma, CEO of Osmo, told TechCrunch in an interview that he believes that the market for pre-schoolers remains untapped with little innovation hitting the space over the last 100 years. This new product launch represents a large and new opportunity for Osmo, which has so far catered to kids aged between five and 12.

In the U.S. alone, there are about 10 million kids who are in the pre-school stage. Additionally, “half of all the toys sale are aimed at kids who have not entered schools,” Sharma said.

The announcement today comes weeks after Byju’s, which acquired Osmo for $120 million earlier this year, expanded its own product catalog. Earlier this month, it partnered with Disney to roll out a new app that aims to educate children aged between six and eight.

Until recently, Byju’s focused entirely on high school students and those preparing for university entrance exams. It has since broadened its courses to cover all school grades. Byju’s, which competes with Unacademy in India, is heavily-funded by investors and valued at nearly $4 billion — it is widely acknowledged to be the leader in India’s e-learning market.

To tackle the pre-schoolers’ market, Osmo is leveraging on the interactive content produced by Byju’s, Sharma said. The nature of the product and market it serves will allow Osmo and Byju’s to expand the kit to many global markets, he explained.

The distribution of the new kit could prove challenging, however, Sharma acknowledged. Osmo has tie-ups with more than 30,000 U.S. elementary classrooms that help it deploy its product to a large number of students. It lacks that for earlier-stage education, but Osmo does plan to replicate that model in some capacity by partnering with pre-schools.

Sharma said also that a number of parents have asked Osmo whether it will have any products for their younger children which gives him confidence that there is raw demand. That said, he acknowledged that Osmo will initially need to be more aggressive than usual with its marketing and other outreach programs to parents.

In terms of subject matter, Osmo has largely focused on science and math to date. Moving forward, though, it plans to broaden its existing product lineup with more content and explore subjects including English language, history and social studies to “cover every aspect of learning,” Sharma said.

Byju’s claims 35 million registered users and some 2.4 million paid customers. It generated around $205 million in revenue in the fiscal year that ended in March this year. The company said it aims to increase that figure to over $430 million this year.