LIVE Online Tutoring Pioneer Vedantu Becomes Latest EdTech Unicorn With $100M Funding

Vedantu, the pioneer in LIVE online tutoring, has announced that it has raised $100 million in its Series E funding round led by Singapore-based impact investing fund ABC World Asia.

The round also saw strong participation from existing investors including Coatue, Tiger Global, GGV Capital, and Westbridge among others. With this round of funding, Vedantu’s valuation stands at $1 billion and becomes the latest EdTech company to join the unicorn club.

Challenging the status quo in India’s K-12 tutoring space, Vedantu was the first company to offer LIVE online classes in 2014 and is credited with creating the category. It has continued to be a pioneer in the space with several first-time innovations that include WAVE, its proprietary LIVE teaching platform, and the 2-teacher model. Both these innovations are playing a big role in improving student outcomes for the company. Some of the company’s innovations have been granted patents in the US. The company looks to continue to innovate further on the LIVE teaching format and penetrate deeper into the K-12 segment by reaching more students.

Today, Vedantu offers tutoring courses to young students from 3 years old to 18 years old, as well as preparation for competitive exams such as IIT-JEE, NEET, Commerce, CBSE, ICSE, and state exams such as Maharashtra boards. Through its newest offering and fastest-growing vertical, SuperKids, it offers extracurricular classes like English Speaking, Reading, and Coding.

Commenting on the latest development, Vamsi Krishna, CEO, and Co-Founder, Vedantu, said, 

“Back in 2014, when we held our first LIVE class, nobody believed this would work. It is super satisfying to see this format becoming mainstream and Vedantu leading the way in innovative online delivery experiences. Our vision is simple: Unleash the potential in every child. We will continue to innovate to reach as many students as possible and create 10x better experiences and outcomes for every child at Vedantu. Even though we have made quality teaching affordable and enabled it to reach masses since our inception, it’s still very early, much more transformation is still to come which we wish to drive forth. Fundamentally, I believe education has a long cycle, and changes take time to manifest. Seeing any significant change requires patience and the tenacity to sustain long term. With that in mind, we want to create a company that outlasts our lives and continues to innovate for decades to come.”

According to a press statement, the funds will be primarily used to strengthen product engineering functions as well as expanding into newer categories through both organic and inorganic routes.

Sugandhi Matta, Chief Impact Officer, ABC World Asia, said, 

“Vedantu embodies our investment themes of providing better access to quality education and using digital technology to improve lives and livelihoods. In India, online education has the potential to extend the scope of ‘Right to Education’ to students in the underserved community and capture the ‘Next Half Billion’ income group, representing over half of the country’s student population. With EdTech experiencing meteoric growth in India, Vedantu as the pioneer and category creator in LIVE online tutoring is driving the tectonic shift towards online learning. Vedantu’s innovative platform empowers teachers who have delivered excellent results to offer personalized education to many students at once, creating the potential for impact at scale. We are pleased to partner with Vamsi and the Vedantu team as they continue to scale and shape learning outcomes for students in India.”

Vedantu is the leader in K-12 LIVE tutoring space. Each month, over 35 million users access Vedantu through its app and web for free. Its YouTube channel gets 65 million views, the highest in the K-12 segment for any educational company in India. Students also access Vedantu through its dedicated Channels on Airtel TV and TATA Sky. 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, making it the fastest growing online education company in this space and the overall second-largest company in K-12 in terms of revenue and number of students.

According to a statement, the latest round will close over the next few weeks, with more investors joining in subsequent tranches. The Rainmaker Group acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Vedantu on this fundraising.

About the Author

Author: Stephen Soulunii

No more a student, but love to learn. Not a teacher, but care about how students are taught. Not an educator, but want everyone to be educated. Not a social worker, but desire to see change. Not a reformer, but always want to see a better world. The author believes that only sound education can bring a better future, better world and technology can help achieve a lot in this field.

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