All that students require to pursue their education is a good laptop and an online tutor. And post the Covid-19-led lockdown, ed-tech is booming across India as is evident from the venture funds that the sector is attracting. The latest to benefit is Bangalore-based Vedantu, which received $100 million in a Series-D round that doubled its valuation within three months.
US-based Coatue was the lead participant in the latest funding round in Vedantu, which was launched in 2014 as an online tutoring platform by IIT graduates, Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena and Anand Prakash. The new round values the company at $600 million, which is up from $275 million in February when it had closed Series-C.
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The company, whose name is derived from the Sanskrit words Veda (knowledge) and Tantu (network), said in a prepared statement that existing investors Tiger Global, GGV Capital, Omidyar and Westbridge Capital also participated in the latest round.
Barely weeks ago, Byju's had achieved the decacorn status when Mary Meeker's Bond Capital pumped in an estimated $100 million into the company, which is also based out of Bangalore. This investment took Byju's valuation to $10.5 billion, taking it to second place in the list of most valuable startups in India, right next to payments firm PayTM.
Following the Covid-19 lockdown since March 24, online education has received a major boost as schools and colleges have remained closed and left students and their parents with no option but to go the digital way in academics.
Vendantu, which was offering courses for students from grade 6 to grade 12, has now included students from primary classes too. The company currently serves more than 25 million students a month, with the company adding as many as 2 million additional students each month, a report published in TechCrunch says.
Earlier in July, Unacademy acquired PrepLadder, yet another digital learning firm, for $50 million. A few days after this deal, the company also acquired a majority stake in Mastree. Around the same time, there were reports that Byju's was negotiating with Doubtnut, a new learning app provider, for an acquisition. Reports said that Byju's was negotiating on an acquisition at an amount between $125 million to $150 million.
(Via) TechCrunch
