Byju's bags $400 Mn fresh fund at $3.6 Bn valuation from Naspers and CPPIB

Edtech major Byju's has raised $400 million fresh funds at a whopping $3.6 billion valuation. This also catapults the ten-year-old startup in a league of top 5 most-valued startups in the country. Byju’s entered the Unicorn club this year in March.

The latest round was led by Naspers Ventures. According to RoC filing with MCA accessed by paper.vc, the Bengaluru-based startup will also onboard Canadian pension fund CPPIB as new investors.

Private equity firm General Atlantic and other existing investors are also participating in the round.

Byju’s, which is backed by the likes of Tencent, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, has been planning to expands its overseas operations particularly in the UK, the US, and Australia.

Three months ago, the online learning platform had scooped up $100 million led by General Atlantic India. The valuation at that point had already crossed $2 billion mark.

Through its flagship product-Byju’s-The learning app, it offers learning programmes for class 4-12 & test preparation for JEE, AIPMT, CAT, IAS, GRE & GMAT. Until June, Byju's had over 20 million users, 1.26 million annual paid subscribers with 1.5 million registered students joining every month.

Apart from Byju's, Unacademy, Edureka, Onlinetyari, Simplilearn, Meritnation are some major startups in the segment that provide online preparation for school as well as competitive exams.

On the revenue front, the company recorded Rs 250 crore in revenue in FY17, and it was likely to cross Rs 550 crore for FY18. Further, it aims to reach Rs 1,400 crore in revenue for the current fiscal.