Exclusive: Masai School raises nearly $5 Mn led by existing backers

Edtech startup Masai School has raised Rs 38.62 crore or $4.77 million in a pre-Series B2 round co-led by India Quotient and On Mauritius. The fresh funding has come after 12 months for the Bengaluru-based company.

The board at Masai School has passed a special resolution to issue 2,403 pre-Series B2 compulsory convertible preference shares (CCPS) at an issue price of Rs 1,60,707 per share to raise Rs 38.62 crore or $4.77 million, company regulatory filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) shows.

India Quotient and On Mauritius have co-led the financing round by infusing Rs 15.81 crore ($1.95 million) each. Unitus Ventures also joined the round with Rs 7 crore.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, the company has been valued at around Rs 400 crore or $50 million (post-allotment). Including this round, Masai has raised total funding of over $12 million to date. In October 2021, it picked up an undisclosed amount from more than 20 angel investors.

Masai School is a higher education career institute which trains young talent for some of the most in-demand jobs. It offers full-stack web development, backend development and data analytics courses to make students job ready.

The company operates on an Income Share Agreement (ISA) model to create an outcome-oriented learning approach. Several startups and unicorns like ShareChat, Swiggy, Ola, Meesho, CoinSwitch Kuber, Cleartrip, NoBroker, and Paytm recruit from the Masai platform.

Post allotment of the round, co-founders Prateek Shukla, Nrupul Dev and Yogesh Bhat collectively hold 39.58% stake followed by India Quotient which commands 21.63% in the company. On Mauritius and Unitus Ventures own 17.77% and 15.58% stakes respectively. The complete shareholding pattern of the company can be seen below:

Masai School recently claimed that it witnessed a 10-fold growth in the number of B2B hiring partners in the past 12 months. As per the company, it is now targeting Rs 120 crore in revenue in FY23 from Rs 19 crore in FY22. 

While FY22 numbers are yet to be filed, the company’s revenue from operations jumped 4.7X to Rs 2.47 crore in FY21 from Rs 53 lakh in FY20. As per its annual financial statements with the RoC, the company’s losses also surged 3.5X to Rs 6.78 crore in FY21 as compared to Rs 1.94 crore during FY20.

Masai School is one of the several players in India inspired by the US-based Lambda School. Newton School and Scaler by InterviewBit also operate in the same space. In February, Tiger Global-backed Scaler scooped up $55 million in its Series B round at a valuation of $710 million. Soon after that Newton School also bagged $25 million in a Series B round.