Next Education acquires ed-tech firm InOpen Technologies

Hyderabad based Next Education India Pvt Ltd has acquired Mumbai-based InOpen Technologies Pvt Ltd, a firm that develops educational content and teacher training solutions, in an all-cash deal.

The deal gives Next Education access to Computer Masti, a computer science-focused curriculum developed by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay and InOpen. As part of the transaction, Inopen's workforce will merge with the Next Education team. The two companies, however, did not divulge the value of the deal.

InOpen's Computer Masti is used by more than 6 lakh students in India in the K-12 market. The term K-12 means that the product has been designed for educational programmes from the kindergarden level up to 12 years of basic education.

"Such strategic acquisitions give us an opportunity for exponential growth. Computer Masti adds to our portfolio and enables us to maintain our position as India's most innovative education products company," said Beas Dev Ralhan, co-founder and CEO of Next Education, in a statement.

InOpen Technologies was founded in October 2009 by IIT Bombay professor Sridhar Iyer, along with Rupesh Shah, who was previously involved with training college students in open source and adult literacy. InOpen designs and develops educational content and solutions for academic institutions.

In 2013, Inopen raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from Japanese education firm Benesse Holdings Inc. In 2011, the company had raised $500,000 in seed funding from Ventureast Tenet Fund II. Pune based investor Shridhar Shukla has also put in money in the startup.

Founded in 2007 by Ralhan and Raveendranath Kamath, Next Education is an educational tech firm that offers 10,000 learning modules for classroom teaching at school and junior college levels.

According to the company's website, Next Education has partnered with more than 7000 schools and its learning modules are used by more than 7,000,000 students. Next Education's learning modules covers seven Indian languages and the syllabuses of CBSE, ICSE, Army and all state boards.