Byju’s announced a new investment from storied Silicon Valley investor Mary Meeker’s fund, Bond, at a valuation of $10.5 billion which has catapulted the online learning company to the position of India’s second-most valuable startup. This is as a report in the Economic Times.
Currently, fintech major Paytm with an estimated worth of $16 billion, is India’s most valuable privately held tech startup.
The investment, which is the first by the growth-stage fund in India, is estimated to be under $100 million, said people in the know of the matter.
The latest financing at the edtech company comes after the US-based investment firm Tiger Global ploughed in $200 million into Byju’s in January, valuing the company at about $8 billion. At the time, ET reported that Byju’s was in talks with multiple investors, including certain US-based endowment funds, to raise further funding of $1 billion through the course of the year.
Meeker—a former partner at marquee Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins who is widely known for her comprehensive Internet Trends reports—launched Bond, a $1.25 billion growth investment fund last year. The firm counts three other Kleiner Perkins alumni—Mood Rowghani, Noah Knauf and Juliet de Baubigny—as general partners. These investors are best known for having backed some of the world’s most iconic tech companies, including Uber, Twitter, Spotify, Facebook and Airbnb.
There are other shareholders whose investments are less then 1%. They are
- Sequoia Capital India
- Advent Capital Management
- Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board
- Lightspeed Venture Partners
- General Atlantic
- Verlinvest
- International Finance Corporation
- Schwab International Equity
The company estimates that it has over 57 million registered students, more than 3.5 million paid subscribers with annual renewal rates pegged at 85%. It said that revenue doubled to Rs 2,800 crore in financial year 2020 from Rs 1,430 crore in the previous fiscal.
Byju’s Revenue in INR Crore
FY2020 – 2800
FY2019 – 1430
FY2018 – 520
Times Internet, the digital arm of Bennett Coleman and Co, and the publisher of The Economic Times, is an early investor in Byju’s. The company also counts Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation – the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, China’s Tencent, South Africa’s Naspers, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, Verlinvest and Sofina, as its backers.
The latest investment in Byju’s comes on the back of strong growth in online learning over the past few years. The restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic with schools across India remaining shut for the past three months, has further boosted growth. Byju’s like many other players in the ed-tech space, made content on its learning app free for all students and introduced live classes on its platform.
“Byju’s has emerged as a clear leader in education technology.. We are excited to support a visionary like Byju and his team in their quest to continue to innovate and shape the future of education ,” said Meeker.
Other Indian edtech startups are also seeing their valuations soar as they acquire more customers from the over 500 million internet users in the country.