Ruangguru Announce Acquisition of Schoters and Kalananti, Expand Product Ecosystem

Ruangguru announced full acquisitions of two startups EdTech, Schoters and Kalananti, with an undisclosed nominal. These two startups will complete the ecosystem of K-12 products in Indonesia Ruangguru, each top official remains focused on the solutions they offer to users Ruangguru.

"We just acquired Kalananti and Schoters, so far the curriculum is in Ruangguru to help students enter PTN and PTS. With Schoters, those who want to study abroad for S1, S2, and get scholarships can be assisted. Schoters is the biggest in Indonesia for guidance like this,” said the Co-founder and CEO Ruangguru Belva Devara in a press conference held yesterday (4/7).

Separately, to DailySocial.id, each of the Schoters and Kalananti officials gave their statements. Schoters Co-founder and CEO Radyum Ikono said that exploration of the acquisition had actually been carried out in November 2021, but the agreement was only finalized at the end of this June. After the acquisition, business processes at Schoters will not change significantly, even the Schoters brand will still exist to touch new users outside the ecosystem Ruangguru.

Schoters solutions will be available on the platform Ruangguru and accessible to all users who need the solution. "We are part of ecosystem Ruangguru. This is interesting because so far we have been guiding high school students who want to study abroad. Ruangguru we have users of high school students throughout Indonesia, while we are a limited startup, once we join, all high school students can join us approach," said Icono.

Since operating in 2018, Schoters claims to have succeeded in helping thousands of Indonesian students graduate to more than 400 universities in 43 countries, including Cornell University, University of College London, Nanyang Technological University, to Harvard University. Also, helping students to get hundreds of scholarships and user growth rate of more than 500% in 2020-2021.

Solutions Schoters not only offers consultation and tutoring for college registration, but also foreign language classes, document preparation, to help find accommodation.

Meanwhile, the Kalananti acquisition process has actually been completed since the end of March 2022. After that, the two immediately stepped on the gas business collaboration. “Our main product is future skills, one of which is coding. Many parents find it very relevant, so many consider coding to be their superior product. We were acquired because of the product coding itself," said Kalananti CEO Ahmad Syahid Zakaria.

Syahid continued, after joining in Ruangguru, he and the team will focus on developing learning products coding for children because they now have wider resources, like never before. Actually, apart from coding, Kalananti has several other educational products, but what will be the focus for the future is coding before returning to serious other products.

“We want to narrow down to one product for mature. Before joining Ruangguru, which we cannot yet optimize itu marketing and salesnya, it will be very helpful from our side. So now we want to product development to our superior product, later diversify to other products.”

For the record, Kalananti is a startup EdTech which was officially established in 2020. This startup focuses on providing courses coding and innovation for children aged 5-12, exploring the skills of the past in a fun way through fun programs.

Kalananti uses approach blended learning which focuses on concepts and competencies. For the ScratchJr program, for example, which is intended for ages 5-6 years, children will be introduced to them coding by creating games/animations in the ScratchJr application, there is no need to read and write. This app allows parents to hone basic logic coding simply with colors and icons.

Feature update in Ruangguru

Other things that were conveyed at the press conference were new products and supporting features in order to welcome the new school year. One thing that is emphasized is presence Ruangguru for Kids, an integrated learning ecosystem to develop children's academic and non-academic potential and abilities from an early age.

In this platform, there are various choices of modes and fields of learning for children aged 3-12 years, ranging from language, coding, read, write and count, to online school. Kalananti and Alta School To complete the solution, next is Dafa Lulu, which is an interactive and animated learning platform for elementary school students in grades 1-6, combining study materials with learning materials storytelling and gamification.

The Dafa Lulu platform is equipped with the Practice Zone feature, a special zone for learning through various interesting educational games, Dafa Lulu Live, for live and interactive learning with teachers using Dafa Lulu content. Outside Ruangguru for Kids, the company also announced an additional feature for Adapto, an adaptive learning video whose flow can adjust to students' level of understanding, called Adapto X.

Adapto itself has been released since last year. In Adapto X, this feature uses simulations and interactive games, emphasizing the proactive implementation aspect to help students understand the subject matter more easily. Lastly, is the UTBK Center, a platform for preparation for the selection of state universities for high school students. All aspects needed to prepare for UTBK, starting from countdown UTBK schedule, distribution of learning materials and strategies, practice questions, analysis of opportunities to pass the UTBK, to information on universities and study programs.