Vedantu Innovation Pvt Ltd, which operates a live tutoring platform, became the fifth digital learning startup in India to hit unicorn status after raising $100 million (Rs 740 crore) in its Series E round led by Singapore-based impact investor ABC World Asia.
The round also saw existing investors Coatue, Tiger Global, GGV Capital, and WestBridge Capital, among others.
The transaction valued the startup, which recently denied rumours of being bought out by the first unicorn in edtech space Byju’s, at $1 billion.
Vedantu is India's 28th unicorn to be born this year; on the other hand, the last year saw the birth of only 11 unicorns.
“Back in 2014, when we held our first live class, nobody believed this would work,” said Vamsi Krishna, CEO and co-founder of Vedantu.
Vedantu was founded by Krishna, Anand Prakash and Pulkit Jain in 2011. The startup claims that over 35 million users access Vedantu through its app and web for free each month.
Its YouTube channel gets 65 million views, the highest in the K-12 (kindergarten to 12th standard) segment for any educational company in India.
Vedantu catered to over 200,000 paying students last year, a 300% growth over the previous year. This growth was accompanied by a revenue increase of 4.5x over the previous year.
“Vedantu's innovative platform empowers teachers who have delivered excellent results to offer personalised education to many students at once, creating the potential for impact at scale,” said Sugandhi Matta, chief impact officer at ABC World Asia.
In July last year, Vedantu raised $100 million in a Series D funding round led by US-based Coatue Management. The investment came three months after Vedantu secured $13 million in an extended Series C round of funding from Chinese venture capital firm Legend Capital, existing investor Omidyar Network and others.
In August this year, executive education platform Eruditus and higher learning startup upGrad became unicorns.
The other two edtech unicorns are Naspers and Tiger Global-funded Byju’s and SoftBank-backed Unacademy.
