Edtech unicorn Eruditus onboards GSV Ventures, CPP Investments in $650M funding round

Eruditus, which offers executive-level courses from top universities, onboarded GSV Ventures and CPP Investments in the $650 million round. The Mumbai-based firm raised the funds only four months ago, from Accel and Softbank Vision Fund 2, which essentially quadrupled its valuation to $3.2 billion.

While GSV Ventures has been majorly investing in edtech startups — including celebrity-teachers platform FrontRow — CPP (Canada Pension Plan) Investments is a global investor offering venture capital and private equity investments, among other services.

"The two new investors are part of the $650 million funding round. The main reason of raising this entire round was to fund our growth both organic as well as inorganic," Ashwin Damera, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Eruditus, told YourStory in an interaction.

The Singapore-headquartered firm runs Emeritus, which offers online certificates and programmes.

To speed this growth, Eruditus — which is similar to US-based Coursera, but with smaller class strength, Eruditus — currently has 2,000 people which is up from 600 at the start of 2021. "Fiscal year 2021 we did about $175 million in bookings and we will be close to $450-500 million in bookings close to 2022," says Ashwin.

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Bookings comprise the fees that the edtech platforms collects from the students for their courses.

The pandemic year was also the biggest lever, which accelerated online education. While Temasek-backed Unacademy went on an acquisition spree, live teaching platform Vedantu into a unicorn.

"Earlier Indian institutes would not have an online education ecosystem. But now they do. And countries in the west are offering courses to attract their workers amid the great resignation," says Ashwin.

To bank on this trend Eruditus — which had 150 courses on its platform in 2020 followed by 500 in 2021 — will be adding 800-900 courses in 2022. Apart from India, the firm is also tying up with universities in Brazil and Costa Rica, among other countries. In India, Eruditus is tying up with the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi and Mumbai) and the Indian Institute of Management (Indore and Lucknow), among others.

Courses will also circle around new subjects including blockchain, crypto and fintech.

Eruditus also counts Prosus Ventures, Sequoia Capital India, and Bertelsmann India Ventures, among others, as their investors.