Byju’s Founder in $800 Million Funding Round With BlackRock

(Bloomberg) -- Byju Raveendran is investing $400 million in his namesake and India’s most valuable startup, Byju’s, leading an $800 million funding round alongside investors BlackRock Inc., Sumeru Ventures and Vitruvian Partners.

Raveendran’s stake will increase by nearly 2% in Byju’s parent Think & Learn Pvt., according to a person familiar with the development. The round values the startup at $22 billion, said the person who asked not to be identified as the information is private. That takes the founder group’s holding to about 25%.

The funding round has closed even as the Bangalore-headquartered edtech startup is in negotiations with at least three special-purpose acquisition companies with plans to go public via a merger. The SPACs include Michael Klein’s Churchill Capital and Michael Dell’s MSD Acquisition Corp., and the SPAC promoted by Harry Sloan, a long-time Hollywood executive. Separately, the startup is also in discussions for a pre-IPO funding round of up to $1 billion. 

Raveendran’s investment is a rare instance of an Indian founder-entrepreneur taking part in a venture capital round at a late-stage startup that is considering an initial public offer. It bucks the trend of others who give up stake early, decreasing their say in the companies they founded in later stages.

Raveendran, 41, a teacher himself and the son of school teachers, founded the education startup in 2015. The online learning company has 150 million learners globally and has seen rocketing growth in a pandemic-struck world as schools shuttered and parents, teachers and students looked for online learning resources. Byju’s has also been on an acquisition spree, buying multiple startups in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Byju’s has 7.5 million annual paid subscriptions for its school lessons app. It also has expanded its product portfolio to include one-to-one learning with teachers in India and elsewhere tutoring school children across the globe in countries like U.S., U.K, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Australia.

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