Silver Lake, a US private equity firm led the funding round for Byju’s, India’s education technology start-up. Byju’s raised $500 million in the funding round. This funding was received at a valuation of $10.8 billion. Some of the current investors of Byju’s like Owl Ventures, Tiger Global, and General Atlantic also participated in the round.
Byju’s raised about $300 to $400 million from Tiger Global and General Atlantic in the start of 2020.
Byju Raveendran, the founder, and CEO of Byju’s said, “We are excited to welcome a strong partner like Silver Lake to the Byju’s family. We are fortunate to be in a sector of positive relevance during this crisis.”
In the investment round prior to the current one, Byju’s raised $100 million from Bond Capital at a valuation of $10.5 billion. Recently, Yuri Milner’s DST Global also invested $122 million into Byju’s.
Byju’s was also in the news recently for acquiring WhiteHat Jr, a popular platform for coding coaching.
Silver Lake Partners also recently spent Rs. 10,202.55 crore in purchasing a 2.08% stake in Jio Platforms. Jio Platforms is the telecom unit of Reliance Industries.
As can be seen, many investors are rushing to invest in Byju’s and the credit for this goes to the phenomenal performance and popularity of this educational start-up even during the time of the pandemic.
At present, Byju’s has driven more than 64 million students to register and 4.2 million students for annually paid subscriptions.
Byju’s was found in 2011 and is owned by Think and Learn Pvt Ltd. Some of its current investors are Naspers Ventures and Sequoia Capital India.
Managing director of Owl Ventures, Amit Patel said, “At approximately $6 trillion, the education market is the second largest sector in the world and experiencing a significant surge in digital penetration. The meteoric growth of both WhiteHat Jr and Byju’s is illustrative of the rapidly growing and maturing ed-tech market in India and throughout the world.”
