Why has Byju’s raised latest round of funds and what it says about valuations?

It looks like the edtech companies are really having their time in the sun. The largest player in the edtech industry in India, Byju’s, raised $500 million in a fresh round of funding from Silver Lakes Partners. It is the same PE fund that also invested in Jio Platforms.

Apart from Silver Lakes, existing investors like Tiger Global and General Atlantic are also participating in this round. In terms of valuation, it is not a big difference from its June funding by Bond Capital. The valuation has gone up marginally from $10.5 bn to $10.8 bn.

The valuation of Byju’s has been growing rapidly in the last few quarters and it is not trying to inch closer to Paytm which is valued at $16 billion. The pandemic highlighted the limitations of the brick education model and outfits like Byju’s got a big boost.

In last 6 months, Byju’s saw 20 million new students start learning from its platform for free. Byju’s boasts of over 64 million registered students and 4.2 million paid subscriptions. On a YOY basis, Byju’s has doubled its revenues in 2019-20 to Rs.2800 crore.

Byju’s has raised total funding of over $1.6 billion from investors. New names like Unacademy and Vedantu are giving still competition.