And the BYJU’s juggernaut continues to roll. In what would mark one of the biggest edtech investments globally (yet again!), Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, has invested $250 Million in BYJU’s for a minority stake. Valuation hasn’t been made public.
The development comes at a time when BYJU’s is looking to bolster its international expansion. The company has plans to make its learning app available in the US, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia by the July-September quarter.
QIA has largely refrained from making startup investments. Before this, the one major investment that goes into QIA’s portfolio, is that in Flipkart. The investment came over half a decade ago, in 2014. Reciprocately, it has been fairly active when it comes to investing in Indian public-listed companies. QIA’s most talked about investment has been into India’s largest telecom company, Airtel. The deal size was close to $2 Billion.
Investments from such marquee investors, and at such grand scale, have been fairly frequent at BYJU’s now. The company had closed a $400 Million round last year, with speculated valuations to the north of $4 Billion. Later, a fairly smaller $11 million round was financed by General Atlantic and Tencent in March this year.
In June last year, BYJU’s claimed that the company has touched ₹100 crore in monthly revenue and also raised its annual revenue target for this year to ₹1,400 crore. The company claims that it is among the few profitable unicorns in the country. There is no official publicly available data to back that though.
