Eruditus, an edtech firm, has closed a whopping $650 million funding round led by Accel and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The firm has announced this news on Thursday. After the current financing event, the startup valuation has surged to $3.2 billion.
Eruditus is the New Unicorn
Mumbai-based Eruditus has become the twenty-third unicorn of 2021 after closing the latest funding round on Thursday. The edtech firm raised $650 million to reach a valuation of $3.2 billion. The financing event was led by Accel and SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Japanese investment SoftBank has further accelerated its investment in the Indian startup ecosystem. This is the second major investment by SoftBank in edtech startup after Unacademy. As per the reports, SoftBank has doubled its investment in India during 2021 compared with 2020. The investment giant took over a year to assess the Indian startup ecosystem and then grew the investment exponentially in the current year.
The current funding round is a combination of primary and secondary transactions. The edtech startup was valued at $700 million last time in 2020. As per Eruditus official statement, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board also actively participated in the new round. Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia India, Bertelsmann, Prosus, and Leeds Illuminates are other major backers of Eruditus, who actively participated in the new event.
Eruditus Plans and Investors’ Trust in EdTech Firm
The company has revealed that it will utilize the current funding to introduce new courses, expand the geographical area for course offerings, partner with more universities globally, target the government and enterprises to have new agreements, and fund acquisitions.
In an official statement, Ashwin Damera, co-founder and CEO said, “With this fundraiser, we’re excited to scale our unique business model, continue to deliver strong learning outcomes, and grow our global impact at a rapid rate.”
Anand Daniel, a Partner at Accel that is the major investor in the current round, praised the business model of Eruditus. He said, “We have known Ashwin and the team at Eruditus for several years and have always been impressed by their approach and execution. We believe that the platform and deep partnerships with the world’s best universities put Eruditus and its partner universities at the forefront of this revolution in higher education. Their products are helping bring the best quality education to students around the world at affordable prices.”
It was founded in 2010 as an offline institute that used to teach 10 days classroom program in a 5-star hotel for 10-15 people. The institute brought faculty from Europe’s INSEAD and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) to teach these people.
Later, it became an online edtech firm in 2015. Currently, it has collaboration with 30 top-tier universities, including MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge, INSEAD, Wharton, UC Berkeley, IIT, IIM, and NUS. These global universities helped Eruditus to design 100 executive-level courses to offer in 80 countries.
Eruditus raised revenue of $185 million in FY21 comapr3d to $100 million in FY2020. After acquiring iD Tech a few months back, CEO Damera talked with Moneycontrol and said that the edtech firm will double its revenue in FY22.
