Allen’s cofounder warns educators leaving for rival edtech startups, says they will be blacklisted

Maheshwari also referred to the edtech firm’s attempts to poach teachers from Allen as a ‘mayajaal’ (delusion). He did not name any specific companies.

On May 1, Allen received an investment of $600 million from Bodhi Tree to help scale up the institute and leverage digital technology to improve learning outcomes for students in India and beyond.

Bodhi Tree Systems is a newly formed investment platform by Lupa Systems founder and CEO James Murdoch and Uday Shankar, the former president of The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific and erstwhile chairperson of Star and Disney India.

This comes at a time when
several edtech firms are venturing into hybrid learning models involving both online and offline set ups.

Unacademy plans to launch around 15 offline centers across nine cities in India after opening one in Rajasthan’s Kota, famous for being a coaching factory for IIT aspirants.

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In February, arch-rival Byju’s had also announced
aggressive plans to double down on its offline play through the launch of ‘Byju’s Tuition Centre’.

Over the course of last year, the company said that it launched 80 offline centers across 23 cities and is looking to scale that up to 500 centers across 200 cities this year. It had also earmarked $200 million to grow its offline learning play.

Companies including PhysicsWallah, Cuemath and Vedantu are also in the process of either expanding or building an offline presence.

Founded by Rajesh Maheshwari in 1988, Allen offers coaching and preparation for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), Pre-Medical (NEET-UG), Pre-Nurture & Career Foundation (Class VI to X, NTSE & Olympiads). It claims to have a pan-India footprint with a growing presence in the Middle East through 138 classroom centres in 46 cities.