Vedantu closes $100 Mn round led by Coatue Management

Edtech firm Vedantu has scored $100 million in its Series D round led by New York-based hedge fund Coatue Management at a valuation of $600 million. According to the company’ press statement, existing investors -- Tiger Global, GGV Capital, Westbridge and Omdidyar -- also participated in the fresh financing round.

This is a 2X jump from April when Vedantu raised a small tranche of $7 million. At that time, the Bengaluru-based firm was valued at $280 million in an extended Series C round from South Korean fund KB Global.

Vedantu kicked off its Series C round led by Tiger Global in August 2019 and since then the nine year old startup gained momentum and now it’s counted among the top three edtech startups in India which include market leaders Byju’s and Unacademy.

The fresh capital infusion is likely to go towards expansion and offering new products.

Besides providing live coaching classes for K12 students, Vedantu has features like live streaming and interactive sessions for NTSE, PSA, KVPY, IMO, JEE Mains including other competitive exams. 

Scoring $100 million at a time when edtech startups are in high demand due to Covid19 pandemic will be a shot in the arm of Vedantu. The K-12 segment has been turning competitive with entry of Unacademy. The Facebook-backed company had recently acquired a controlling stake in Mastree to test the K-12 segment.

Byju’s dominates the K-12 segment followed by Toppr and Vedantu. Google-backed Cuemath is in an advanced stage to raise a large round from new and existing backers whereas Unacademy is reportedly in conversation with fresh financing that will value it at $1.2 billion.

Vedantu has added 1-1.5 million students in the last three months as  students are relying on e-learning since educational institutions are shut for the past 2-3 months. During the lockdown, it also registered a sudden jump in traffic, collections and revenue. In April alone, its revenue grew by 80% and onboarded 6,50,000 additional learners across K-12 & competitive exams including JEE and NEET .

According to data intelligence platform Sensor Tower, Vedantu had around 4.7 million monthly active users or MAU on Google Play Store in June. Unacademy recorded the highest MAU at 15.8 million whereas Byju's and Doubtnut recorded 9.8 million and 5.8 million monthly active users in the last month.

Led by Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, Anand Prakash, Vedantu has raised a little over $100 million in funding in previous rounds. As of now, its early backer Accel holds the largest stake in the company at 16.75%, followed by China’s The Advanced Learning (TAL) Group, which has 14.35% stake in the company. 

Tiger Global and Omidyar Network own 13.69% and 12.66% stake respectively.