For this Indian edtech bigwig, a little M&A spree isn’t a dangerous thing

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Hello readers,

My girlfriend began pursuing her master’s degree in education this year. Since I happen to be a writer, she often sends me her essays for proofreading and gut-checking, free of charge. Lucky her.

At first, I thought it would be a boring read. I didn’t do very well in school and never even obtained a bachelor’s degree. So I went in expecting an incredibly dense read about the intricacies of education. But I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that a bulk of the write-ups revolve around how technology is revolutionizing education – something I often read about on Tech in Asia’s front page.

This week’s list of startup acquisitions illustrates that potential. Out of the four acquisitions in the past few days, three were in India’s edtech sector. On top of that, Indian edtech major Byju’s has acquired so many companies over the past few years that people have started joking about it on Twitter.

As my girlfriend’s semester break is nearly over and she prepares to go back to school this week, I’m actually pretty eager to read more of her homework. Who knows? I might even be able to use what I learn in my own writing.

You can find all other important investment deals that happened in the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up.

Let’s dive straight into the biggest deals and M&As in the last week.

BIGGEST DEALS BY COUNTRY

🇸🇬 Grab: The Indonesian arm of the Singapore-headquartered super app received US$375 million as a strategic investment from Emtek Group.

🇮🇱 Wiliot: The Israeli internet-of-things startup bagged US$200 million in series C money from 83North Venture Capital, Amazon Web Services, Avery Dennison, Grove Ventures, M Ventures, Maersk Growth, NTT DoCoMo Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Venture Investment, SoftBank Vision Fund, Verizon Ventures, and Vintage Inv.

🇨🇳 CalmCar: The Chinese intelligent driving vision system provider conducted a series C round worth US$150 million from Alpha Win Capital, China Science Advanced Fund, China Unicom, Dawu Venture Capital, Dragonstone Capital Management, OCI International, VinFast, and ZF Company.

🇮🇳 ShareChat: The India-based social networking app scored US$145 million in series F funding from Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Temasek Holdings.

Lists of most active investors in the region

List of top-funded startups in Asia

List of largest exits in Asia