Bengaluru-based LIVE tutoring pioneer Vedantu has raised Rs 96.6 crore ($12.56 million) in an extended Series C funding round it started in August last year.
The latest round was led by Chinese venture firm Legend Capital, with participation from the startup’s existing investor Omidyar’s Ohana Holdings.
According to reports, the company has issued about 602K and 179K Compulsory Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS) to Legend Capital and Omidyar respectively, with price per share at Rs 1,229 at a nominal price of Rs 10. Accordingly, Legend Capital has invested Rs 74.5 crore while Omidyar Rs 22.1 crore.
Founded in 2011 by Vamsi Krishna, Anand Prakash, Pulkit Jain and Saurabh Saxena, Vedantu is an online tutoring platform that provides personalized learning by using technology to bring together teachers and students on a single platform to enable live learning between them. It offers individual and group classes delivered by experienced teachers in a LIVE real-time, virtual learning environment. It currently focuses on learners from grade 6-12 offering tutoring in all major subjects and school boards, including CBSE, ICSE, and IB.
With learners across 1000+ cities and 40+ countries, the startup’s platform has over 25 million users accessing its free content every month, with 6 million learners per month taking live classes on its platform. Vedantu claims to currently have over one million lifetime users on its platform.
While the company highligted it usually adds over 50K paid users on its platform annually, it said that it has added 100K new users in the past 10 days, thanks to unprecedented surge in online education due to school closures over coronavirus crisis. With the new funding, the company plans to increase traction in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities amid coronavirus lockdown.
Meanwhile, the latest investment comes after Vedantu had raised additional $24 million as part of its Series C round in February this year led by global venture capital firm GGV Capita, with participation from other existing investors. Prior to this, the company had raised $42 million in Series C round led by Tiger Global and WestBridge Capital in August last year. The round also saw participation from existing investors including Accel, Omidyar India, and TAL Education. Prince Maximilian of Liechtenstein, CEO of LGT Group, and the founders of the edtech startup had also participated in the round.
Last month, Vedantu anounced to offer free online classes to students across the country during the coronavirus crisis. Under this initiative, schools can use their own content and teachers, but deliver classes using content from Vedantu on its LIVE and personalized platform. Schools can also opt for end-to-end online tutorial through content and teachers delivering LIVE and personalized classes on Vedantu. Visit Vedantu to get free access to Live classes and all Vedantu content.
