Exclusive: Doubtnut raises $25 Mn in its Series B round

Update: The round was closed at $31 million.

Edtech startup Doubtnut has raised Rs 183.3 crore or $25 million in its Series B round from SIG Global, Sequoia Capital, WaterBridge Ventures and ON Mauritius, regulatory filings show.

The fresh round comes after a gap of one year and takes the total investment in the Gurugram-based startup to $44 million till date. In January 2020, it had picked up $15 million in its Series A round led by Tencent.

Doubtnut has allotted 8,097 series B preference shares at an issue price of Rs 226,345 per share to raise Rs 183.3 crore in which SIG Global has invested Rs 111.7 crore. Sequoia, ON Mauritius and WaterBridge have pumped in 37.25 crore, Rs 26.8 crore and Rs 7.5 crore respectively.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, the company has reached the post-money valuation of Rs 880 crore or $121 million.

Doubtnut allows students to send screenshots of their doubts and offers free video solutions in quick time. The four-year-old startup’s core audience is the K12 segment and also competitive exam seekers including JEE and NEET.

It’s worth noting that Doubtnut was in an advanced stage of talks for acquisition by edtech Unicorn Byju’s last year. According to Entrackr’s sources, the talks failed due to differences over valuation as Byju’s had proposed to acquire the Aditya Shankar and Tanushree Nagori-founded company in about $130 million but later slashed the valuation to $80-90 million in the final offer.

Entrackr had exclusively reported the development in October, last year.

The company has passed another resolution to increase its ESOP pool to 2860 equity options which is now worth nearly Rs 65 crore. In December, it had expanded its ESOP pool by adding nearly 293 fresh equity options to increase the pool size to Rs 27.3 crore.

Post the allotment of fresh shares, Doubtnut’s early backers Tencent and Sequoia have emerged as the largest stakeholders among investors with 12.9% stake each. SIG Global, On Mauritius and WaterBridge control 12.71%, 12.47% and 11.09% stake in the company respectively.

Co-founders Shankar and Nagori’s stake in the company is estimated at 15.44% and 10.29%, respectively.