Eruditus, an online education company, has received $350 million in debt from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, a worldwide capital management firm, mostly to fund mergers and acquisitions.
According to persons familiar with the situation, Eruditus, which partners with prestigious universities like as Columbia, INSEAD, and others to provide executive education and MBAs, aims to make purchases worth a billion dollars in the next year or two.
According to reports, the company has gross bookings of $500 million for FY22, which is increasing 2.5 times year over year.
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The deal will “expand our mission of making education accessible around the world by deepening our investment in the education space to reach different segments and audiences. Our acquisition pipeline will enable us to accelerate growth, impact more learners and improve our profitability,” co-founder and CEO Ashwin Damera shared.
CPP Investment Board is an existing equity investor in Eruditus.
In May of last year, Eruditus purchased Silicon Valley-based Idtech for $200 million in order to enter the K-12 Stem market, or school education in the science and mathematics stream. SoftBank Vision Fund II and Accel US led a $650 million investment round in August, which included a secondary share sale. After this fundraising, it was valued at $3.2 billion, putting it in the unicorn club, which includes firms with a valuation of at least a billion dollars.
Sequoia India, Accel, Prosus (Naspers), SoftBank, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are among Eruditus’ other investors.
It began in 2010 as an offline institute that taught a 10-day classroom curriculum for 10-15 participants at a 5-star hotel. Faculty from INSEAD in Europe and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) were brought in to instruct these individuals.
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In 2015, it transitioned to an online edtech enterprise. MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge, INSEAD, Wharton, UC Berkeley, IIT, IIM, and NUS are among the 30 major universities with whom it now collaborates. These international universities assisted Eruditus in developing 100 executive-level courses that will be available in 80 countries.
According to Damera, after this debt financing, the company will aim to raise equity capital in the second half of 2022, which might range between $200 million and $300 million. He indicated that more details are still being worked out.
India accounts for around one-fifth of Eruditus’ gross yearly bookings, with the balance distributed across regions such as the United States, Latin America, Europe, and others. In FY21, the company reached out to students in more than 80 countries and partnered with more than 50 colleges around the world to provide its programmes.
