Impact investor ABC World Asia – which is backed by Temasek Holdings and several other blue chips – is leading a US$100 million ($135.81 million) Series E funding round into ed-tech company Vedantu.
Other investors participating in this round include Tiger Global Management, Coatue Management and GGV Capital.
With this Vendatu has entered the coveted unicorn club, which consists of companies that are valued over US$1 billion. The Bangalore-based startup is the fifth Indian ed-tech unicorn after Byju’s, Unacademy, upGrad and Eruditus.
This comes as more investors place their bets on the growing demand for online education in India.
Launched in 2014, Vedantu started off by providing live tutoring. It has since launched a proprietary live-teaching platform and expanded its reach to the US.
The platform offers live classes to students from 3 to 18 years.
The classes supplement what is taught in school and helps students to prepare for India’s competitive engineering and medical school entrance exams. Vedantu plans to use the funds to fortify its technology and expand into newer categories, including via acquisitions.
“We pioneered live online tutoring in 2014 when India didn’t even have 4G coverage and struggled for four years before usage picked up,” says Vamsi Krishna, co-founder and CEO of Vendantu.
He hopes the platform can hit 500,00 paid users by March 2022, up from around 200,000 at present.
Cover image: file photo
