Stones2Milestones, an edtech startup that enables children learn to read in English, has acquired Multistory Learning, a Chennai-based boutique kids’ content company.
The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
With this, the publishing IP of Multistory, The Book Lovers’ Program for Schools and Ms Moochie Books, is now part of fREADom – The English OS, a statement said. Also, with the acquisition, Multistory founder Amrutash Misra and his team are joining Stones2Milestones, it added.
Founded in 2011, Multistory Learning was established with the aim of using stories as building blocks for developing educational products and services. It entered the children’s reading space with its flagship product Book Lovers’ Program for Schools – a structured reading program for primary and middle schools designed to improve comprehension, communication, and creativity. The program supplements school libraries with curated and created content, and is used in over 200 schools and by 200,000 children.
Multistory Learning also runs Ms Moochie Books (an award-winning children’s publishing house), The Best of Indian Children’s Writing (BICW) award (an annual award that recognizes the best Indian children’s books for 3 to 12-year-olds from publishers across India), and Publishing and Education Consulting for schools and corporates. In 2019, Multistory launched the LiLBI kindergarten program – a new-age KG program that focuses on reading as the core element.
Expressing his excitement, Kavish Gadia, Co-founder and CEO, Stones2Milestones, said in a statement,
“Amrutash and his team did something fantastic – they worked on the ‘will to read’. They were able to entice children into reading through fabulously designed content over a decade. Our customers will be delighted to have access to this content. We are also looking forward to the magic that they will create in the next few years within fREADom. The possibilities are endless. Stones2Milestones is re-affirming the goal of building a world-class full-stack English ed product with this acquisition.”
Founded in 2009 by Kavish Gadia and Nikhil Saraf, Stones2Milestones is on a mission to create a nation of readers. The Gurugram-based focuses on edtech product development that enables children develop the will and skill to read in English through its adaptive mobile reading app fREADom and Wings of Words (WoW), a research-based pedagogically unique program with both instructional and inspirational aimed at children aged 3 to grade 3.
fREADom provides a multimodal learning experience that allows children to pick up critical language skills early so that they claim the freedom to learn on their own, to chart their own destiny. While S2M’s fREADom app offers books, news, and activities, fREADom Live offers online English classes with trained facilitators.
Speaking about the company, Amrutash Misra, Founder and CEO, Multistory Learning, said,
“We desire that our children should be better at reading than us – more than just reading emails, newspapers and WhatsApp messages, they should be able to read big books and absorb knowledge effortlessly from the textual world around us. As Bill Gates does – it’s said that he reads 5 books a day!”
With the acquisition, the fREADom app now has a mix of Multistory’s professionally generated content (PGC) in addition to curated PGC and UGC. Additionally, Multistory’s physical distribution channel will now be leveraged in such a way that fREADom users will get books in real life in addition to digital content, a statement said.
According to the statement, the fREADom app and the fREADom Live 1:1 and 1:7 English classes have seen phenomenal growth in the last few months, growing 15X in three quarters. It said that the company is at an annualized revenue of $1.5 million, three times from its last financial year. With 100% month-on-month growth in revenue, the Gurugram-based company is confident of crossing $7.5 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) by March 2021.
The acquisition comes on the heels of closing a bridge funding of $2.5 million led by its existing investor Unreasonable Capital and its limited partner Goldhirsh Foundation.
