According to its cofounder, Abhimanyu Saxena, edtech firm Scaler Academy has purchased online coding platform Coding Elements in an all-cash acquisition valued about $1 million (about Rs 8 crore).

The Bengaluru-based firm had been in talks with Coding Elements for about a month because it wanted to offer a data science education to its users.

"The demand for data science is growing at a rapid pace. But there is a vacuum in terms of training programmes which prepare people for hands-on jobs as data scientists," he said. “We could have added a data science course to our bouquet of courses in other ways as well, but acquisitions are a great way to accelerate the journey."

Mudit Goel, the founder of Coding Elements, has a "fantastic history" in data science, according to Saxena, and will oversee the vertical for Scaler.

Scaler Academy, which also has Anshuman Singh as a co-founder, was founded in 2019 to help working individuals improve their abilities and advance in their careers. More than 7,500 people have enrolled in Scaler's educational programmes to date. There are 50 instructors on staff. Its first acquisition was Coding Elements.

Coding Elements began as a Delhi-based coaching institute in 2017, giving students computer science courses. Following the Covid-19 epidemic, it closed its coaching centres and switched to online classes. It now has around 4,000 students on its platform, all of whom will now continue their studies on Scaler's platform.

In collaboration with the government think tank Niti Aayog, Coding Elements also provides courses to over 2 million children in 6,000 schools. The collaboration is expected to continue in the future.

Scaler, which has so far collected $21.5 million (about Rs 156 crore) from notable investors such as Sequoia India, Tiger Global, Global Founders Capital, and Rocket Internet, is eyeing future acquisitions both in India and abroad. "We are looking at companies that have high distribution in our target group," Saxena said.

This fiscal year, it has set aside $8 million (about Rs 50 crore) for mergers and acquisitions.

The edtech sector in India has recently experienced a lot of consolidation, with major mergers and acquisitions taking place. In the previous six months, Byju's, India's most valuable startup, has spent over $2 billion on four acquisitions: Singapore-based Great Learning, US-based Epic, and two prominent local edtech firms, Aakash Educational Services and Toppr. Last year, it acquired Whitehat Jr.