Lead School’s valuation scales 3X to Rs 1,180 Cr in Series C round

Edtech startup Lead School has secured Rs 186.26 crore in a Series C funding round from WestBridge Capital. The fresh round for the company has materialized after a year. 

Bridge WestBridge made an investment of Rs 184.42 crore directly while it also used Konark Trust and MMPL Trust to invest Rs 1.67 crore and Rs 17.5 lakh respectively. 

Lead School has made an allotment of 14,16,840 Series C1 preference shares and 10 equity shares at an issue price of Rs 1314.67 per share, shows regulatory filings. 

Importantly, Lead School has announced Rs 210 crore in the Series C round. The remaining capital would reflect soon in the filings. Post allotment, Westbridge (along with both the aforementioned trusts) will control a 16.34% stake in the company while Elevar equity will remain the largest stakeholder having nearly 42% stake in the company. 

The founder’s collective stake in the company has been diluted to 41.14%.

Started as a chain of schools in 2012 by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, Lead School evolved into an integrated system that provides schools with books, workbooks, smart classes, teacher training, teacher manuals, ERPs, or Math-Science kits. It claims to train 10,000 teachers and power 800 schools across India. 

Fintrackr’s calculation estimates that the Lead School has been valued north of  Rs 1,180 crore (post-money), a 3.15X jump as compared to its valuation in the last round. The company had raised Rs 20 crore from Elevar Equity at Rs 375 crore valuation in 2019.

Kashyap Deorah, founder of HyperTrack, and Ashok Deorah are among the early backers of Lead School with the whole Deorah clan controlling nearly 23% stake in the company collectively. 

As of now, the company claims to impact over 3 lakh students. 

The Lead School’s financing has come amid a lot of actions in the edtech segment due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Byju’s had turned into a decacorn with investment from BOND Capital and acquired WhiteHat Jr and in an advanced stage to take over DoubtNut.

Unacademy and Vedantu’s valuations crossed 500 million. Unacademy also acquired Prep Ladder, Mastree and CodeChef. Toppr also cornered Rs 350 crore Series D round whereas ClassPlus is also in advanced talks to raise a $15 million round.