Wednesday, 20 February 2019

Byju acquired Osmo

Tencent backed online learning platform Byju is looking to leverage Osmo, the Silicon Valley startup it recently acquired for $120 Million, to build capabilities in technologies such as computer vision and artificial intelligence.
Osmo, founded by former Googlers specializes in using computer vision for creating blended learning games for kids. While the startup will be able to leverage Byju’s content, the Bengaluru-based firm will get access to Osmo’s tech smarts.  Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field in which computers are trained to extract, analyze and understand digital images or videos, with the intent of replicating what humans can do.

Byju’s DNA is predominantly offline (and content), and even today a bulk of their distribution remains offline. Osmo will help the company develop a tech lens in the product offering. Osmo’s technology can today detect shapes, numbers, letters and even images of characters and objects in relatively real-time, but going forward it says this capability will grow. Imagine a biology classroom where students get step-by-step instructions on how to dissect a frog from software that is watching their every move.

The startup will continue refining its machine vision tools and will add more members to its team to speed up the development of advanced capabilities. Today, Osmo’s software is only trained to recognize pre-programmed images, but in the future, it could make sense of something it is seeing for the first time and throw up relevant content for the student.

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