Reliance-Owned Embibe Acquires Ed-Tech Company Funtoot

Reliance Industries Ltd has struck its third acquisition of a technology company this month as it bought a 90.5% stake in e-learning products and services provider Funtoot for Rs 71.64 crore (about $10 million).

Published on 14 Jul 2023

The retail-to-refining conglomerate said in a stock-exchange filing that it acquired the ed-tech unit Indiavidual Learning Pvt. Ltd, which operates under the brand name Embibe.

Embibe plans to invest another Rs 10 crore in Funtoot, operated by eDreams Edusoft Pvt. Ltd, to increase its stake to 100%. Reliance said that the additional investment is subject to Funtoot achieving agreed milestones and is likely to be completed by December 2021.

Funtoot, incorporated in July 2010, develops e-learning products and provides practice, testing and analysis modules for mathematics and science school students.

The Funtoot acquisition comes within days of Reliance acquiring a majority stake in drone maker Asteria Aerospace Pvt. Ltd and in software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider NowFloats Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Reliance said it expects the acquisition to accelerate Embibe’s digital education technology platform development initiatives.

Funtoot posted revenue of Rs 7.34 crore, Rs 9.30 crore and Rs 4.93 crore for the financial years 2018-19, 2017-18 and 2016-17, respectively. It recorded a net profit of Rs 27.74 lakh for 2018-19 and Rs 2.46 crore for 2017-18 but posted a loss of Rs 2 crore in 2016-17.

Reliance has been snapping up technology companies over the past year as part of its strategy to expand its digital businesses. It had acquired Embibe last year and said that it would invest $180 million in the ed-tech startup.

Earlier this month, VCCircle reported that Embibe was set to seal another acquisition of an online education company.

In September, the Reliance-owned artificial intelligence-based conversational AI platform Haptik acquired Buzzo.ai, a Mumbai-based conversational commerce platform. In July, Haptik acqui-hired Los Angeles-based conversational AI startup Convrg Technologies Inc. to expand its business in North America.

In August, Reliance said it would acquire a majority stake in Shopsense Retail Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs the fashion portal Fynd, for Rs 295.25 crore (around $41.9 million). In December last year, Reliance purchased an equity stake of 5.56% in UK-based blockchain startup Vakt Holdings Ltd for $5 million (Rs 35 crore) to accelerate its digital journey.