Sequoia-backed Classplus Set To Raise Rs 73 Cr In A New Round

Sequoia-backed Classplus Set To Raise Rs 73 Cr In A New Round

Strive and Spiral will participate with Rs 2.26 crore and 9.8 crore respectively.

04 May, 2020

Classplus, the Edtech startup is set to kick off its Series B round by raising Rs 73 crore in a tranche led by RTP Global along with Sequoia’s Surge Ventures, Strive Investment Partnership, Blume Ventures and Spiral Ventures.

As per the regulatory filings, RTP Global is set to invest Rs 30.16 crore while Surge Ventures would put in Rs 15.08 crore. Blume Ventures will be the third biggest contributor, accounting an investment of Rs 15.03 crore. 

Strive and Spiral will participate with Rs 2.26 crore and 9.8 crore respectively. Arpan Sheth, Aditya Shukla and Angel investors Anand Chandrasekaran were the individual investors who participated in the round. 

After the Series A round, promoters’ stake would be decreased from 39.25 per cent to 29.6 per cent. Early-stage investor Blume will emerge as the second-largest stakeholder in this round, having a 15.89 per cent stake. Sequoia’s Mauritius based SPV Surge Ventures and RTP Global will hold 13.23 per cent and 10.14 per cent respectively while the rest of the investors will have single-digit ownership in the company.

The startup had last raised Rs 17.5 crore as part of its Series A round in January this year. Blume Ventures, Surge Ventures and Kunal Shah’s QED Innovation Labs had invested in the company at a valuation of nearly Rs 80 crore. 

Founded by Bhaswat Agarwal and Mukul Rustagi, the SaaS-enabled firm enables private coaching institutes and their tutors to streamline their content distribution, communication, payments and online assessments. Classplus was also in Sequoia Capital’s accelerator program, ‘Surge 2.0’. 

Presently, Classplus claims to have over 5,00,000 users and more than 3,000 teachers on the platform across India. It recently released new features to reach more educators and students. Since students have been relying on online learning during the lockdown, it has been collaborating aggressively with coaching classes and providing online lessons, tests and multimedia content to students.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, a recent survey showed that investors will be bullish on the education and healthcare sectors for the next three to twelve months. While the healthcare sector has not seen any markable investments for quite some time, edtech companies have dominated the local funding landscape since the beginning of 2020.