Barely a month after acquiring software coding startup WhiteHat Jr. for $300 million, ed-tech startup Byju's today raised $500 million in a new round of funding. This took India's second most valued startup's total valuation to $10.8 billion.
While the company revealed the new round and the participation of Silver Lake, the size of the round or its valuation wasn't mentioned. However, a report published in the TechCrunch said Byju's had raised $500 million, resulting in its total valuation to touch $10.8 billion.
In a prepared statement, the company's co-founder and CEO Byju Raveendran said the latest round was led by the Menlo Park-headquartered PE firm Silver Lake with existing investors Tiger Global, General Atlantic and Owl Ventures also participating. "Our classrooms are changing possibly for the first time in 100 years and I’m really excited about the opportunities that we have to redefine the future of learning,” he said in the statement.
- Byju's buys coding startup WhiteHat Jr. for $300 million
- EdTech firm Byju's could become India's second most valued startup
- Byju’s early learn app now available for kindergarten kids
In recent times, Byju's has been on an acquisition spree with the WhiteHat Jr. being its fifth and largest purchase till date. Earlier, it had acquired Osmo, a maker of educational games, for $120 million. WhiteHat Jr is India’s second largest ed-tech company with a revenue run rate of $150 Million.
Ever since the Covid-19 led lockdown in March, India's ed-tech companies have seen massive growth in users as students turned to online learning as both schools and colleges were shut down. Byju’s, Toppr and Vedantu, were among the first to offer free access to their platforms in the early stages of the lockdown.
Byju's, which began its operations on August 15, 2015, prepares students for both undergraduate and graduate level courses and has added school-students and even kindergarten to its list of target audience. The company's growing valuation is in sync with the growth of online education that India is witnessing in recent times.
The Facebook-backed start-up Unacademy too revealed recently that it had trebled its valuation within months, with the latest round fetching it $150 million just about a week back. Since the lockdown, Byju's reportedly added 20 million new students on its platform, which today boasts of over 64 million students and 4.2 million paid subscriptions. The company's revenue numbers are not shared, as it continues to be a privately held company.
The rate at which Byju's is raising funds, it may not be surprising if it goes after a few other acquisitions in the near future with market analysts expecting a consolidation phase in the ed-tech space in the short-term.
Meanwhile, a report published in the BusinessInsider says following its acquisition by Byju's the company is aiming to add 20,000 teachers by the end of the year in order to match the growth of new students in the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, apart from India.
