Aakash to invest Rs 100 crore to rebuild Aakash Digital in two years

Test preparatory firm Aakash Educational Services plans to invest around Rs 100 crore in rebuilding and scaling up its edtech unit Aakash Digital after it has come out of the control of beleaguered edtech company BYJU'S, managing director and CEO Deepak Mehrotra said.

In an interview to PTI, Mehrotra said that as part of Aakash 2.0 journey, the company will scale up Aakash Digital classrooms to cater to students across the country including in those areas where it is not feasible to set up physical rooms.

"We have brought the Aakash Digital Program back under Aakash, we are building on it and investing heavily. We believe that over the next 18 to 24 months, we will be spending close to Rs 100 crore on building this programme -- investing in technology, content, teacher capabilities, and delivery.

This investment will go into the Aakash Digital Classroom Program," Mehrotra said. BYJU's had acquired a majority stake in Aakash Educational Services (AESL) in April 2021 but due to financial trouble at the company, BYJU'S had to sell a significant stake in Aakash to Manipal Group chairman Ranjan Pai.

With the stake sale to Pai, AESL is no longer a subsidiary of Think and Learn, the owner of the BYJU's brand. BYJU's at present holds around 26 per cent stake in AESL.

Mehrotra said that AESL will offer everything in the Aakash Digital Classroom it offers in physical classrooms. "This year, we restarted Aakash Digital under Aakash. We have more than 10,000 students this year. Until last year, those enrolled in this programme were BYJU's students, not Aakash students," he said.

Mehrotra said AESL gets high engagement of students because the number of students per class is limited to 70 to 80 and therefore teachers are able to manage the students effectively.

"The student-teacher ratio is a key aspect of Aakash's philosophy. Even today, we have close to 80 to 100 faculty members operating, and this number will obviously increase dramatically as we try to scale the number of Aakash Digital students.

Our aspiration is to reach about 1 lakh students over the next two years," Mehrotra said. He said that few teachers from BYJU's have been retained for Aakash Digital but most of the teachers have been deployed by AESL.

AESL has also absorbed around 250 sales professionals who were working with BYJU's. At present AESL has about 4 lakh learners in its entire system. Mehrotra said that the test preparatory firm aspires to take the number to about a million.

"We have aspirations to grow to about a million learners. We believe a significant chunk -- almost 40 per cent of this large number will come from the alternate business models of Aakash Digital,

Aakash Learning Centers, and other models. We are trying to create models that allow us to go deeper into the country and deliver an engaging learning experience to learners," he said.