Exclusive: Falcon Edge to lead Cuemath’s $40 Mn Series C round

Edtech is booming this year. Byju's has raised over $1 billion and turned decacorn while Unacademy’s valuation jumped 2X to $1 billion in a matter of a few months. Vedantu, Toppr, Eruditus, and Classplus have raised substantial capital in 2020. 

Google-backed Cuemath is also raising a Series C round, said three people aware with the details of the potential transaction. “Cuemath is in talks with Falcon Edge’s India focused fund to raise $40-45 million in a fresh round,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity. 

Falcon Edge had raised $300 million for its India focused fund Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) in February this year. Sources emphasized that the contours of the deal are almost finalised. “The term sheet has been served by Falcon Edge and the transaction is likely to get through by October,” added another source who also requested anonymity as the talks are private.

Cuemath provides after-school math classes and uses physical worksheets, quiz cards with other tablet-based in-house content. With 5,000 franchises in India, Cuemath claims to have conducted 25 million classes for over 100,000 students in the country. 

The firm also launched a digital platform Cuemath LEAP for children from grade 7 to 10. According to the company, its digital platform grew four-fold in the past six months and has over 500,000 hours of live classes. 

Falcon Edge didn’t respond to Entrackr’s queries while Manan Khurma, co-founder and CEO of Cuemath said, “I can’t comment on any specifics at this stage. We have been witnessing a lot of interest on the basis of our momentum.” Khurma also claimed that the company turned cash positive in the quarter ending September.

Cuemath is the second edtech company in which AWI is in advanced conversation to lead a fresh financing round. It’s also set to lead fresh proceeds into Classplus. Last month, Entrackr had exclusively reported about the deal that would value Classplus in the range of $65-70 million.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought a massive change in learning habits and triggered a hockey stick kind of demand curve for edtech solutions in India. As a result, venture capitalists and large investors across the globe have been queuing up to fund local edtech companies. Last week, Byju’s scored $500 million from Silver Lake while Unacademy became a unicorn with a $200 million infusion from SoftBank.