The latest investment values the company at about $16.5 billion. Paytm is valued at $16 billion.
Byju’s has dethroned Paytm to become the country’s most valuable start-up after it secured close to $350 million in fresh funding from a clutch of investors including UBS Group, Blackstone, Abu Dhabi state fund ADQ, Phoenix Rising and Zoom founder & CEO Eric Yuan, the company’s filings with the RoC showed.
The latest investment values the company at about $16.5 billion. Paytm is valued at $16 billion.
Byju’s did not respond to FE’s queries.
The funding is understood to be an extension of the Bengaluru-based ed-tech firm’s broader over $1 billion financial round it has been raising in tranches. As part of the investment, the Byju Raveendran-led startup was backed by a group of investors including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group, Baron Funds, XN Exponent Holdings and others at a valuation of about $15 billion earlier this year. The recent $350 million investment takes the total size of the funding round to more than $1.5 billion.
Bulk of the capital raised will be used to fund a spate of acquisitions Byju’s has lined up. In April, the firm acquired brick-and-mortar test prep service provider Aakash Educational Services (AESL) in a close to $1 billion cash and stock deal. Byju’s is also understood to have acquired rival Toppr in a transaction estimated to be over $100 million; the deal has not yet been formally announced. Besides, it is also closing in on discussions to acquire other related businesses including Great Learning and Gradeup, according to reports.
The ed-tech space led by Byju’s also cornered the bulk of the start-up funding in 2020 as the pandemic led to a boom in subscriptions for online educational services. A bunch of investors including new backers like Silver Lake and Alkeon Capital collectively infused over $1 billion into the company last year.
Byju’s that claims to have as many as 80 million registered users and 5.5 million subscribers, saw its revenues double in FY21 over the previous year.
In an interview with FE in late September last year, founder & CEO Byju Raveendran mentioned the company added more than 25 million free users on the platform between April and August compared with just above 40 million in the first four-and-a-half years.
The market size of Indian ed-tech sector is estimated to grow by 3.7 times in the next five years, to touch $10.4 billion by 2025 from $2.8 billion in 2020, according to a recent report by EY-IVCA. The segment will see more than 37 million paid users by 2025.
https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/sme/byjus-dethrones-paytm-to-become-indias-most-valued-start-up-at-16-5-billion/2270711/
