Chhavideep Singh
Source: Udemy
Online education has become one of the most prominent business opportunities because of the unfortunate COVID-19 pandemic. Electronic-learning tools fill in the potholes created by closed schools, colleges, academies and universities, everyone is losing time and education is one thing that should not be affected at any cost. This bump on the road has given a kick-start to online education platforms which are raising enormous funds to capitalise on these businesses’ growth potential.
Recently, an e-learning start-up, Udemy has raised USD 100 million in its Series F funding round that took the company’s valuation to a whopping USD 3.3 Billion.
Udemy is an American online course provider that is a marketplace for more than 1, 50,000 courses in video format in 65 languages. Udemy consists of top-notch professional courses and creative ones like photography too.
This fundraise was a robust move from Udemy as they concluded their Series E round, just earlier this year raising a total of USD 50 million worth of funds that concluded the post-funding valuation at over USD 2 billion.
This funding round ended in February before the COVID-19 pandemic began and since then, e-learning businesses have witnessed a sudden surge, consequently, such businesses have also turned heads of various investors to capitalise on this booming opportunity.
During this early funding round, the president of Udemy’s business division mentioned that the company had brought on-board about 60 million students who purchase online courses in an à la carte way, while major enterprises including Adidas, Pinterest, Toyota and Wipro amongst many others use a compiled subscription plan.
Source: Udemy
In February, the fund raised by Udemy came in from a single large investor, Benesse Holdings which is a Japan-based educational publisher that creates content for children, educational videos and offers various online as well as offline courses. Benesse Holdings provides such content for Udemy and its own educational subsidiary, Berlitz.
In all of this, Udemy profits Benesse Holdings by developing educational content for them, use it for their own platform and even for Berlitz.
Apart from Benesse, there are several other existing investors of the company, such as Learn Capital, Prosus, Norwest Venture Partners, Stripes, insight Partners and many more.
In the regulatory filing, there was a mention of ‘pari passu liquidation preference’ which means that some investors will not participate in common leftover stock proceeds.
Udemy currently sells its shares for a price of USD 24.15 per share.