Byju’s, the Indian online education startup, is raising around $1 billion from investors, Bloomberg reports, in an infusion valuing the company at around $15 billion.
The company is also in talks to try and raise another $200 or $300 million, at a slightly higher valuation, in the coming few weeks.
Byju Raveendran, the education company’s founder and chief executive officer, said Byju is looking at making acquisitions to help speed up growth in markets like the U.S.
A former teacher and son of educators, Raveendran, 39, said the pandemic had done wonders to bolster the industry of online education. The company has 80 million registered users in India, mainly learning things like simplified math and science concepts with the aid of animated videos and games.
New investors for Byju’s included B Capital Group, founded by former Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin, Baron Funds and XN. And the round also included some existing investors like private equity giant Silver Lake Management, Owl Ventures and T Rowe Price, who are investing around $100 million each in the funding round.
Byju’s is currently working on offline exam preparation, as well as one-on-one lessons for coding and math in global markets, including in the U.S., Latin America and Australia.
The investment into Byju’s comes as fundraising reaches new highs from Indian startups, with half a dozen companies announcing unicorn-level capital raises in the past week.
Byju’s raised $500 million in 2020, with a backing from Silver Lake. That push came from a trend in India with parents looking for online schooling as the pandemic raged.
The pandemic last year had affected around 250 million Indian children as schools shut down. Parents had to take on digital tactics in order to allow their children to keep up with schooling.
Byju’s saw investment activity from numerous big names including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Naspers.
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