Lead School bags $30 Mn in Series D round

Edtech company Lead School has raised $30 million in its Series D funding round led by GSV Ventures in participation with existing investor WestBridge. This is the first major investment by the US-based venture capital firm in an Indian edtech firm.

For Lead School, the new round has come after eight month of its $28 million Series C round. WestBridge and Elevar Equity led the round in August 2020. 

While the company did not disclose its valuation in this round, Fintrackr’s estimates showed that it was valued at around $160 million in the last funding round. 

According to Lead School, the fresh proceeds will be used by the company to accelerate growth, rollout of new product offerings, strategic acquisitions and hiring top talent across domains. 

It’s worth noting that the company had acquired the student assessment startup QuizNext in December 2020. It looks like Lead School may acquire more strategic fits.

A brainchild of Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, the eight-year-old company provides integrated curriculum and technology solutions to private schools with books, workbooks, smart classes, teacher training, teacher manuals, ERPs, or Math-Science kits.

The company claims to have tied up with over 2,000 schools catering to more than 800,000 students and aims to grow its reach to 25,000 schools in the next five years. Currently, it has a presence in 400 cities, including tier 2 to tier 4 cities, in 20 States.  

During the financial year ending on March 31, 2020, Lead School recorded a 4.5X jump in its operating revenue to Rs 28.61 crore. The company’s total expenditure in FY20 saw 4.8X rise to Rs 66.57 while losses during the period rose 5.7X to Rs 36.4 crore.

Besides  Elevar Equity and WestBridge, Lead School counts Kashyap Deorah, founder of HyperTrack, as its investor who backed the Mumbai-based company in its early stage.