Within four months of last fundraise, BYJU’s picks up fresh funds from Tencent

Online tutoring firm BYJU’s has announced raising an undisclosed amount from the Chinese internet giant, Tencent Holdings Limited (Tencent).

This news comes close on the heels of its recent round of $30 million from Brussels-based family firm Verlinvest, announced in March this year.

According to a press statement released by the company today (July 25), this latest round of funding will help BYJU’S accelerate its product development for new markets and enable inorganic growth through acquisitions.

Speaking of acquisitions, just last month, the company was in the news for acquiring TutorVista and Edurite from Pearson. At that time, Byju Raveendran, Founder & CEO, BYJU’S, had said that the partnership will help them enhance their product offerings and give access in some of the new markets for their international products.

YourStory had first reported about the acquisition in May, explaining why it makes sense for the education behemoth to take on these businesses.

Also read: Why Byju’s chose to bet on Edurite and TutorVista

The company had also raised capital from IFC, a member of the World Bank Group in December last year, and roped in $50 million in a round co-led by Mark Zuckerberg’s and Priscilla Chan’s investment arm The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Sequoia Capital in September, last year.

The round before that was in March last year when the startup had raised a heavy round of $75 million from Sequoia Capital and Sofina.

Speaking about the recent funding, Byju Raveendran, said,

 “We are excited to have Tencent on board with us. This makes our strong investor portfolio even more diverse. At BYJU’S, we have been fortunate to have investors who have always played a crucial role as partners in our growth story. With increased brand awareness and strong adoption amongst students, this year we expect the revenue to double again and we will be profitable on a full year basis.”

He added that, “This round of funding will help us leverage our expertise in creating highly effective tech-enabled learning programs to cater to the learning requirements in new markets.”

Hongwei Chen, Executive Director of Investment and M&A at Tencent, said,

"We share BYJU’S mission of transforming education by creating personalised learning experiences for students. We are excited to be partnering with Byju on this exciting journey."

The company claims that its BYJU’S Learning App, launched in 2015, has close to nine million students learning from the app and over 450,000 annual paid subscribers.

The company claims to have seen more than 100 percent growth with revenue growing from Rs 115 crores (FY 15-16) to Rs 260 (FY 16-17) crores while having turned profitable last quarter.

According to a report by Kaizen equity fund, private equity investors since 2007 have injected a total of $ 1.1 billion in the Indian education sector. With 14 exits since 2007, private equity investments in the education sector have returned a healthy 21.5 percent IRR, claims the report.

Website- BYJUs