Byju’s leases large office park in B’luru
BENGALURU: : Think and Learn Pvt Ltd, which runs edtech unicorn Byju’s, has taken up 5.58 lakh sq ft office space on lease, at a software park in suburban Bengaluru from Kalyani Tech Park Pvt Ltd, in a large lease transaction in the southern city.
Byju’s has taken up 3.47 lakh sq ft in the ‘Ebony’ building and another 2.11 lakh sq ft in the building ‘Magnolia’, both at the ‘Kalyani Platina’ project in Whitefield. The edtech firm has paid a stamp duty of ₹84.76 lakh for the leased property, for a five-year rental tenure, according to documents accessed by real estate data and analytics firm Propstack.
Byju’s will pay around ₹2.35 crore monthly rent for the office space in ‘Ebony’, and have access to 463 car parks. It will pay another ₹58 lakh rent for the space at ‘Magnolia’, with access to 282 car parks. According to the lease deed, there would be 5% rental escalation annually.the Kalyani Platina IT park is spread across 22 acres in Whitefield, known for its sprawling office parks and residential enclaves, with a built-up area of 1.8 million sq ft. The project consists of seven commercial buildings located.
Byju’s, India’s most valuable startup, was valued at $22 billion after it raised $800 million recently this year, and is working on initial public offering plans. It had made close to nine acquisitions last year, including upskilling platform Great Learning and test preparation platform Toppr.
“Bengaluru continues to lead the demand for office space in India. The Byju’s transaction is yet another proof of how companies from different sectors prefer to locate their large-scale operations in the city. That said, edtech is currently facing some challenges in the country and we believe that similar deals will be less common in future,” said Raja Seetharaman, co-founder of Propstack.
A Byju’s spokesperson didn’t respond to email queries.
Unicorns, or startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more, are likely to occupy about 14 million sq feet of office space by 2024, a two-fold rise from the current level, property advisory Colliers recent said. This would be led by large offices that unicorns are likely to lease across major markets of Bengaluru and Delhi-ncr. These companies are likely to lease an average of about 2.7 million sq feet of office space annually across 2022-24 across the top six cities, a three-fold increase from the preceding three years.
Byju’s has been steadily ramping up its office footprint in both Bengaluru and the financial capital of Mumbai, and has taken up office space across various micro-markets over the last year. It took up 43,550 sq ft on lease at ‘Corporate Centre’ office tower in suburban Mumbai’s Andheri-kurla Road, from Krishna Developers Pvt Ltd.it also picked up a 9,500 sq-ft office at a ‘Satellite Gazebo’ in Andheri on a five-year lease, where it will be paying an annual rental of ₹1.67 crore. It leased about 3,000 sq ft in suburban Mumbai’s Glacis Tower building in Khar last year. It also took up 400,000 sq. ft of office space on lease in 2021 in Bengaluru’s Outer Ring Road from developer Prestige Group, which can house nearly 4,000 people.
PTI
NEW DELHI: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), UNICEF and Yuwaah are collaborating to make twenty-first century skills accessible to school students, according to officials. Generation Unlimited or Yuwaah, supported by UNICEF, is a platform to bring young people together with the private sector, governments, and international and local organisations to turn them into active and engaged citizens. In continuation of the ongoing collaborations on life skills, CBSE, UNICEF and Yuwaah will work together on career guidance as well as enabling access and engagement of students in volunteering opportunities. A statement of intent was signed to mutually agree on the areas of collaboration and key milestones therein, the officials said. According to the officials, the meeting also marked agreement on the roll-out of the Passport to Earning (P2E) initiative for CBSE students, wherein they shall be upskilled with key 21st century skills mapped to CBSE’S employability skills curriculum.
Based on the pilot, the initiative will be scaled to reach all students, including scaling teacher training and capacity building to enable the same.
“The new National Education Policy (NEP) has laid a lot of stress on moving from rote learning to skilling. It also recommends instilling skills in students, right from the school level. Passport to Earning is one of the initiatives supported by the Board towards achieving this goal. In time, we may explore integrating P2E with the Skill Hubs Initiative of the Centre government,” CBSE chairperson Nidhi Chibber said.