General Atlantic & Tencent pump in another Rs 80 Cr in ed-tech unicorn Byju\'s

General Atlantic & Tencent pump in another Rs 80 Cr in ed-tech unicorn Byju's

Global PE major shells out over Rs 10,000 more per share compared to previous its capital infusion in December, gets allotted 4,000 more Series F CCCPSBiswarup Gooptu  |  ETtech  |  March 11, 2019, 05:00 IST
General Atlantic & Tencent pump in another Rs 80 Cr in ed-tech unicorn Byju's Private equity major General Atlantic and Tencent, the world’s fifth-largest internet company, have put in an additional Rs 75 crore-Rs 80 crore in Think and Learn, the owner and operator of ed-tech platform Byju’s Learning.

General Atlantic, which made Byju’s its first bet in the broader Indian consumer internet ecosystem in December, has pumped in Rs 33.28 crore for over 4,000 compulsorily convertible cumulative preference shares, or Rs 82,882.50 per share, according to filings submitted by the Bengaluru-based company with the Registrar of Companies, and accessed by business signals provider paper.vc.

The latest cash infusion in Byju’s comes about three months after the company closed a $540 million equity financing round led by Naspers Ventures, the investment arm of the South African internet and entertainment conglomerate, and Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board in December last year, which valued it at over $3.6 billion.

Read: 3 reasons why Byju's is a different type of Unicorn

General Atlantic, which managed assets of about $28 billion as of June last year, had invested Rs 199.1 crore in Byju’s in December, shelling out Rs 72,570 per share at the time. The PE firm paid an additional Rs 10,312.50 per share this time round.

According to estimates, the firm also spent Rs 367.8 crore in acquiring shares from Byju's co-founder Riju Raveendran and Sequoia Capital in a secondary transaction.

The company’s valuation is now believed to be a shade over $4 billion.

Naspers Ventures and CPP Investment Board paid Rs 77,600 and Rs 77,870 per share, respectively. Emails sent to Byju Raveendran, chief executive of Think and Learn, and Sandeep Naik, managing director and head of India and Asia Pacific at General Atlantic, on Sunday afternoon did not elicit any response at the time of going to press.

The storied investment firm has made multiple investments in financial services, having earlier backed payment platform BillDesk, share registrar Karvy and wealth management major IIFL.

“General Atlantic is known for an interesting and systematic approach to private market investing in India, especially in the financial services space where their investments betray a very concerted approach towards investing in, what I would term as watering holes,” Vivek Durai, co-founder of paper.vc said.

Tencent, which had first invested in Byju’s in July 2017, having put in $40 million into the decade-old company valuing it at $775 million at the time, has once again invested through its entity Proxima Beta and has been issued over 5,000 shares.

While the filings do not indicate how much Proxima paid per share, it is expected to be the same price paid by General Atlantic, indicating that it has put in about Rs 43 crore.

ET had reported in December that Sequoia Capital, an early backer of Byju’s, had sold an estimated 7% of its stake in the company to Naspers Ventures and General Atlantic, pocketing $185-$190 million in the process.

Byju Raveendran continues to be the single largest shareholder in the company, with 21.84% stake, while Naspers holds 11.82%, Sequoia, having invested through three entities, has a cumulative ownership of 14.2%, and the company’s co-founders Riju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath holding 8.75% and 4.47% respectively, According to data provided by paper.vc.

CPP holds 4.93% in the company, Verlinvest 4.14% and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative 3.85%. Proxima Beta held 3.53% stake in Byju’s.