BYJU'S raises Rs 2,123 crore

BYJU's, India’s largest education company and the creator of the most popular learning app for school students, has raised Rs 2,123.08 crore from two new investors.

According to a report shared by Paper.vc to DH, BYJU's issued preferential shares to Naspers Ventures and Canadian investor CPP Investment Board Private Holdings (3) Inc.

While Naspers received 1,59,352 shares with a total value of Rs 1,236.65 crore, the CPP Investment Board Private Holdings Inc received 1,13,823 with a total value of Rs 886.4 crore.

Think & Learn Pvt Ltd, the holding company of BYJU's, shared the data with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) recently.

When DH reached out to BYJU'S, the company declined to comment. But as per sources, who are familiar with the funding, told  DH that the round will have a total amount of $400 million.  

The ongoing funding round is expected to value the company at around $4 billion, more than triple the value during the last round.

As of April 2018, the company has raised around $244 million. The major investors include Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Sequoia Capital, Sofina, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Verlinvest, Aarin Capital and Times Internet.

The company is also going ahead with its plans to invest on manpower by hiring around 600 employees in July across product, content, tech and business development roles. BYJU's is planning to connect smaller cities and town by setting up around 30 offices across the country by the end of the year. It also plans to expand in English-speaking markets, including the US, the UK and Australia.

In July this year, BYJU's announced that it crossed Rs 100 crore of monthly revenue, and has revised its revenue targets for this year to Rs 1,400 crore.

Commenting on the growth, CEO and Founder BYJU’S Byju Raveendran said with a consistent 20% month-on-month growth, the company is expecting to finish this year with Rs 1,400 crore in revenues.

"The launch of the personalised version of our app last year, helped us boost engagement and also enhanced the learning experience for our students," he said.

BYJU's started off as an offline teaching centre in Bengaluru and later launched an app in 2015 to increase its user base. The company currently offers two separate learning apps, the one for students from Classes VI to XII and the other one targets students of Classes IV to V.

The company also made a mark with its acquisitions like online tutoring brand TutorVista, education solutions provider Edurite, and data analytics platform Vidyartha.

The other edutech competing in similar space include Educational Initiatives and Cuemath.