Exclusive: Classplus to raise $15 Mn in a round led by Falcon Edge

Edtech companies are on a roll in India as offline educational setups have been closed due to Covid-19 pandemic. All major companies in the space have either raised capital or in the process to mop up fresh financing. After Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu and Toppr, Classplus is on the brink of raising a new round.

Classplus is in advanced stages to close a $12-15 million round from Falcon Edge, said three people aware of the details of the transaction.

“The conversation is in its last leg, and Falcon Edge has already given a term sheet,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity. “The round may exceed an $18-20 million figure as two more investors are in initial talks.” 

Entrackr couldn’t ascertain the name of the other two investors.

This will be the third round of investment for Classplus in the past six months. In May, the Noida-based venture raised $9 million (Rs 73 crore) financing led by RTP Global along with Sequoia’s Surge Ventures. In February, the company secured $2.5 million in a pre-Series A funding led by Blume Ventures and Sequoia.

“The fresh financing will value Classplus in the range of $65-70 million. Blume Ventures is also participating on a pro-rata basis,” said the second person, requesting anonymity. “The deal is almost done, and if nothing goes wrong, it will be announced soon.”

Entrackr’s immediate queries sent to Classplus, Falcon Edge, Blume Ventures did not elicit any response. We will update the story as and when they respond. 

Founded by Mukul Rustagi and Bhaswat Agarwal, the SaaS-enabled firm allows private coaching institutes and their tutors to streamline their content distribution, payments, communication, and online assessments. 

Classplus was also in Sequoia Capital’s Surge 2.0 accelerator program.

As of now, Classplus claims over a million users with 10,000 tutors on the platform across 100 cities in India. It recently released new features to reach more students and educators. Since students have been relying on online classes during the lockdown, it has been tying up aggressively with coaching classes and providing online lessons, tests, and multimedia content to students.

Besides bumper growth, 2020 has been proven to be a stellar year for edtech companies in terms of fundraising and valuation. The segment’s poster boy - Byju’s turned into a decacorn and has raked in $400 million this year while Unacademy had raised a $110 million from Facebook, General Atlantic, and Sequoia at a valuation of $510 million. 

Vedantu closed its $100 million worth Series D round at a valuation of little over $500 million and Toppr also received Rs 350 crore Series D round in July this year.

The segment has also witnessed the biggest exits across the local startup ecosystem in 2020. Byju’s acquired coding platform - WhiteHat Jr for school children in a deal worth $300 million. The BOND Capital-backed edtech major is all set to announce the acquisition of doubt clearing platform DoubtNut in $150 million. 

Similar to WhiteHat Jr, this will also be an all-cash deal. Entrackr had exclusively reported the DoubtNut and Byju’s are in an advanced stage to seal the deal in June.

Unacademy also acquired three companies - PrepLadder, Masters and CodeChef. Little known PrepLadder is one of the finest exits as the company didn’t raise any external capital and eventually sold out in a $50 million cash plus stock deal.