Eruditus emerged 2nd largest edtech firm in terms of scale in FY22

Executive education company Eruditus was the second largest revenue making edtech firm in FY22, after edtech major Byju’s. Its operating scale crossed Rs 1,850 crore in the fiscal year — higher than Unacademy, upGrad, PhysicsWallah (PW) and Vedantu.

Eruditus saw its operating revenue surge 86.9% to $245.25 million (Rs 1,859 crore)in FY22 from $131.2 million in FY21, according to its consolidated financial statements by the group company in Singapore.

The company primarily offers online and classroom management education programs in collaboration with business schools. The sale of these services was the sole source of revenue for Eruditus. It also provides workforce development programs via its online platform Emeritus which claims to have educated more than 2,50,000 individuals across 80 countries.

The Eruditus group has 10 subsidiaries across 7 countries including the USA, China, India, Mexico, UK, Singapore, and UAE.

The United States was the largest geographical market in terms of revenues, accounting for around 48.77% of its annual revenues. Collections from the US grew 2.4X to $119.6 million in FY22 as compared to $49.73 million in the previous fiscal year (FY21).

Asia and Asia pacific formed 22% of the total collection during the last fiscal year. Revenue from these regions grew 39.9% to $54.18 million in FY22. Significantly, the company booked an income of $72.48 million against the reversal of contingent consideration. Fintrackr has excluded this amount while calculating revenue as it is not operational in nature.

On the expense side, employee benefit expenses were the largest element which constituted 44.1% of the overall cost. This cost grew 5.5% to $262.15 million in FY22 which also includes $149.24 million of SARs (non-cash expenditure) which was 56.8% of the employee benefits. The reason for such high SARs was back-to-back funding rounds.

The company works with university partners including MIT, Columbia, Harvard, and Cambridge among others to facilitate its executive training courses. It pays a program fee to these partners which jumped 96.7% to $108.01 million in FY22.

The group added another $26.37 million and $14.29 million towards professional and technology costs which pushed the overall expenditure by 49.5% to $594.2 million (Rs 4,504 crore) in FY22.

In particular, the expenses of $115.84 million against impairment of goodwill have not been considered while calculating the total cost as it is non-cash in nature.

In the end, losses for Eruditus jumped 32.1% to $348.95 million (Rs 2,645 crore) during FY22 from $264.2 million in FY21. Its ROCE and EBITDA margin stood at -112.09% and -128.55% respectively in FY22. It spent $2.42 to earn $1 in operating revenue.

The loss numbers of Eruditus are marginally better when compared to top valued edtech Unacademy, whose losses surged 85% to Rs 2,848 crore in FY22. In contrast, Vedantu and upGrad registered Rs 696 crore and Rs 627 crore loss in FY22 respectively. Byju’s stood at the top with Rs 4,500 crore loss during FY21, but we are unable to compare its latest numbers as Byju’s has not filed its FY22 numbers yet.

Eruditus raised its last equity round worth $650 million in August 2021 at a valuation of $3.2 billion followed by a $350 million debt in March 2022.

We had pointed out at the time of its FY21 results that Eruditus has a very clear, and valuable proposition for the market, and growth potential seems high considering the headway it had made by FY21 itself. That prognosis seems to be playing out well for the firm, as it continues to build out an ever larger cohort of alumni from its many courses and overall reach. Legacy matters in the education business, and while the executive education business may not be evaluated the same way, Eruditus’ ever increasing numbers continue to establish both credibility and higher market potential for it. The strength in the US market is a good sign, along with the slowing of losses, indicating the beginning of a path to profitability.