Byju’s, in a fresh round of investment, (Think and Learn Pvt. Ltd) has received around $30 million from Brussels-based family office Verlinvest. This event is sure to significantly boost the expansion and business of the startup.
A person closely aware of this development informed The Tech Portal;
Verlinvest is coming in at a higher valuation than the last round, at about $700 million. Byju’s is one of the few education technology start-ups to have scaled significantly in the last 18 months, which has helped the company stoke interest in global investment firms
Verlinvest’s was founded in 1995 and its home page reports that it “manages assets of over €1.4bn in value across multiple geographies.” The company takes a lead in making investments in firms like e-commerce, education, food and beverages and retail and hospitality. Some of its major investments in the Indian sub-continent include wine making firm Sula Vineyards, food maker Veeba Food Services Pvt. Ltd, Drums Food International Pvt. Ltd along with ice cream maker Hokey Pokey and Future Consumer Enterprise Ltd..
While Byju’s did agree on this news, it has declined to comment on any figure relating to funds and valuation. Byju’s founder Byju Raveendran said in a statement;
Our partnership with Verlinvest will further boost our aspiration to change the way students learn across the globe. In the last 18 months, we have witnessed exponential growth in India. While these numbers are very exciting, there is a long way to go before we can call it a revolution. The fact that we are still reaching to less than 1% of the student population, shows the immense potential and the impact we can create.
Byju’s fundraising run till date, has been an affair that has been pretty much in isolation to the current fundraising state of the Indian startup ecosystem. While a couple years back there were times when startups were finding it way too easy to raise funds in multiples of millions of $$$, most of those who raised funds, have either choked by now or are on the verge of the same. Byju’s on the other hand, has had a rather decent run, with the company receiving regular cash infusion almost every year.
Back in March 2016, Byju’s also raised a funding of $75 million from Sequoia Capital and Belgian family office Sofina. Few months later in September the company raised an impressive $50 million, led by Chan Zuckerberg initiative along with participation from Lightspeed Ventures, Sequoia, Sofina and Times Internet. In December World Bank’s investment wing International Finance Corp provided it a funding of another $15 million.
Byju’s raised atleast $160 million last year. It was founded by Byju Raveendran in November 2011, and has by far raised close to $200 million.
Byju’s excels in providing better learning programs to students of class VI to XII, and preparation materials for competitive exams like JEE, CAT, IAS, GRE, GMAT and others. In an interview Raveendran revealed that they are trying to expand globally, especially to US and UK, introduce new subjects apart from the conventional ones, as well as introduce products for class IV and V as well.
Byju’s has brought in some remarkable changes to its business model in the last one year, converting it from a classroom-based model to a very different app-based one. Byju’s currently claims that its app has been downloaded over 8 million times, of which 400,000 consumers are paid annual subscribers.
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