The lockdowns and the practice of social distance across India have prompted students to opt for online learning. As digital learning takes center stage during this challenging time, e-learning companies like Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd.( Byju's), Unacademy, and Vedantu have been taking proactive steps to strengthen their digital infrastructure.
Recently, Indian e-learning start-up Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd. commonly known as Byju has reportedly announced that the company is near to close $400 million funding from the investment company DST Global.
The deal values Byju at $10.5 billion and can be signed early this weekend. The deal would make the company India's second most valuable startup after Paytm, an Alibaba Group's financial payment brand.
For the record, DST Global is the investment company headed by Russian-Israeli businessman Yuri Milner. The company sponsored a host of high-profile Indian companies such as Flipkart Online Services online store, Ola, the ride-hailing app, Swiggy for food distribution, and Udaans, a start-up for business e-commerce. He is also an early supporter of largest internet firms such as Alibaba, Facebook Inc., and Twitter Inc.
Byju's simplifies the learning through simple teaching methods including games and videos. It was created by Former teacher Byju Raveendran who developed the 2011 smartphone application.
The app is built for teaching students from kindergarten to 12th-grade students and has over 570 lakh registered users and over 350 lakh subscribers. More than 300,000 new customers are added each month. Byju's revenues doubled from the previous financial year to USD 373 million in March 2020.
This year, Byju's raised $400 million alone and was backed by the Bond Capital co-founded by Mary Meeker, an investment guru in Silicon Valley. Byju is not alone in the race as its competitors including Vedantu, has received $100 million last month from U.S.-based investor Coatue management in online learning. Another leading start-up, Unacademy, is estimated to raise funds at over $1 billion valuation .