RIL to Invest USD 180 Million in Embibe.com over 3 Years

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited has acquired 73% stake in online education solutions provider Embibe.com and will invest 180 million dollars over a three-year period to further enhance the research and development of the artificial intelligence technology that has enabled Individual Learning Private Limited (Embibe) to become a leader in using this technology to create user-specific learning assistance for coaching for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and the Common Entrance Test (CET), among others.

Embibe was established by Aditi Avasthi in November 2012 in an attempt to address the generic nature of coaching for entrance examinations in India at the time. A graduate of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, but once an aspirant for an IIT seat, she sought to address the need for more personalized coaching in a space where coaching centers prided themselves on results garnered by more generic curricula. Since that time, several students who have gone with Embibe as their AI coach of preference have achieved the results that they have wanted to, and managed to gain admission into India’s top universities. At present, Embibe is thought to have a user base of approximately 15,000 students.

RIL’s interest in moving into this space seems to have broader aims, namely to expand more comprehensively into the education space to address the needs of K-12 students, professional skill building, and other curriculum categories such as language acquisition, both in India and abroad. The company has said that Avasthi will continue to head Embibe, and will “drive the growth of the business.”