Edtech Byju’s is now India’s highest-valued startup at USD 16.5 billion

Byju’s, the largest education technology company, has emerged as India’s highest-valued startup after a USD 340 million funding round involving investors such as UBS Group, Blackstone, and Zoom founder Eric Yuan among others.

Recently, Byju’s had disclosed that investors including Abu Dhabi government fund ADQ as well as Phoenix Rising had jointly invested around USD 350 million in the startup. The company is now valued at USD 16.5 billion and has surpassed the Indian e-commerce payment system Paytm.

The new investments are part of larger fundraising started by Byju’s earlier this year to acquire over USD 1.5 billion. The EdTech company was valued at USD 5.75 billion in July 2019 and subsequently USD 11 billion last year.

Byju’s intends to use the partial funding amount to acquire more startups from the education technology space. The company has already acquired Indian institute Aakash for around USD 1 billion earlier this year and is in talks to buy online learning startup Toppr as well as U.S.-based reading platform Epic.

For those unaware, Byju’s specializes in offering undergraduate and graduate-level courses to students and it has also expanded its reach to school-going students. The COVID-19 lockdowns allowed the startup to witness substantial growth along with other online platforms such as Unacademy and Vedantu.

Earlier this year, Byju’s stated that it had over 80 million users comprising of 5.5 million paid subscribers. In this context, Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner of GSV Ventures mentioned that Byju’s had managed to accumulate around USD 100 million in the U.S. last year.

Reportedly, at a UBS event early this year, the startup executives stated that the present revenue run rate of Byju’s is USD 800 million. This amount is anticipated to reach USD 1 billion in the upcoming 15 months.

Source Credits:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/12/ubs-investment-makes-byjus-the-most-valuable-startup-in-india/