Ed-tech unicorn Byju’s is looking to invest $200 million in offline tuition centres over the next 12-18 months, to cater to students from grades 4 to 10, the company said.

The company conceptualised its offline foray last year after the acquisition of tutorial chain Aakash Education Services for an estimated cash-and-stock deal worth $950 million.

It has already launched 80 offline centres across 23 cities and is looking to scale that up to 500 centres across 200 cities this year.

“A lot of parents felt that their child should also get access to offline centres and physical intervention. Hence, we decided to expand offline through ‘Byju’s Tuition Centre’ which will imbibe an omni-channel learning strategy,” Mrinal Mohit, chief operating officer of Byju’s, told.

These centres will be equipped with high-quality online learning material, analytics-led assessment and will combine the presence of physical teachers to improve learning outcomes, he said. Each centre is expected to have an average strength of 30-40 teachers, which Byju’s will hire and train, he added.

The centres will also equip students with tablets to take assessments and courses online.

Byju’s, which was last valued at $21 billion, is looking to onboard close to 3,000-4,000 new teachers for its tuition centres over the course of this year.

Including teaching staff, Byju’s is aiming to add 10,000 individuals to run these 500 centres.

It is also targeting a base of over one million students for its offline-led learning play over the next 24 months.

While these centres will predominantly focus on learning around mathematics and science, it will also offer students holistic development through counselling and Olympiads.

The courses that Byju’s will offer at its tuition centre will be priced in the range of Rs 3,000 to Rs 3,500 monthly, the company said.

Learnings from Aakash

After the acquisition of Aakash in April 2021, Byju’s has taken its learnings and implemented it for its offline-learning model.

“We have picked up from the hybrid learning model adopted by Aakash during Covid-19, and borrowed bits from how they structure their courses, customer learnings as well as how to drive student engagement in physical classrooms. We have also tried to understand compliances, best operation practices as well as marketing activities for scaling our physical centres,” said Himanshu Bajaj, head of Byju’s Tuition Centre, who joined the company in November last year.

Bajaj added that the company currently has no plans to enter the competitive test preparation segment offline, or target students above grade 10 – areas which are largely covered by Aakash’s offerings.

The company will, however, look to integrate some of its acquisitions, made over the course of last year, on to its offline tuition centres.

Currently, Byju’s is gearing up for its international public listing this year.

The firm is said to be exploring the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) route and is in negotiations with at least three such routes including Michael Klein’s Churchill Capital and Michael Dell’s MSD Acquisition Corp, Bloomberg reported last month.

The company raised $1.2 billion in debt in November last year for acquisitions.

Byju’s had made close to nine acquisitions last year, including upskilling platform Great Learning and test preparation platform Toppr.

It also acquired children’s reading platform, Epic and code-learning website, Tynker to fortify its presence in the US market.