India-based online tutoring service Vedantu has increased a series C round backed by educational services provider TAL Education from $42m to $66m, the Economic Times has reported.
Venture capital firm GGV Capital led the second tranche, which included unnamed existing investors. The August 2019 first close was co-led by Tiger Global Management and WestBridge Capital and also featured TAL, Accel and Omidyar Network India.
Vedantu runs a freemium service where students aged roughly 11 to 18 can take part in live interactive lessons through laptops or mobile devices. They answer questions during the lessons and can issue queries once it is complete.
The company said it has expanded its monthly active users from 10 million to 25 million since the round’s first close and intends to move into sessions for younger age groups. It has also created a system called Wave to track individual students’ progress.
Vamsi Krishna, chief executive of Vedantu, said: “We are going to come into new categories, especially in the lower grades, and you will see us investing heavily in this. The expansion won’t be in a single shot, but one category at a time.”
Accel and Tiger Global provided $5m in series A funding for Vedantu in 2015, and Accel returned for an $11m series B in late 2018 featuring $5m from TAL and additional capital from Omidyar Network. It reportedly received $1.4m in debt and equity financing from Trifecta Capital in August prior to the series C’s first close.
