Published: 3/26/2021
Good afternoon, it's Friday and we're nearing the end of yet another March amongst an increasing number of COVID cases (in India at least). But companies are still growing at rapid paces and we have a couple of large rounds to talk about today- a new potential BYJUs round and DotPe's Series B.
➡️ India's most "successful" edtech company is in the news again as they are in talks to raise even more capital at an even higher valuation. The company raised a billion dollars last year and was last valued at $11B and is now in talks to raise an additional $600M that would value the EdTech giant at $15B.
➡️ The company is likely going to use the capital to acquire more companies in addition to their acquisitions of WhiteHat Jr, Aakash Educational Services and an alleged acquisition of Toppr. BYJUs is also in talks to acquire a US based company (I wish I knew who though).
➡️ 2020 was certainly a blockbuster year for the company as it has now amassed 80M users, of which 5.5M users are paying subscribers. The company is also "profitable" and generated revenues of over $100M last year. Sources also told TechCrunch that the company's current revenue run rate is around $800M and is poised to hit $1B in the next 12-15 months (so the valuation is quite reasonable from that standpoint)
➡️ I honestly don't think it'll be long until BYJUs becomes the most valuable Indian company. The company is also able to raise large amounts of capital from global investors and acquire a lot of the up and coming companies, which a) help stop competition and solidifies the company's dominance; and b) helps BYJUs diversify outside of just it's K-12 and competitive exams business.
2. https://bit.ly/3cnVXdh: Dot raises a $23.4M in a Series B led by PayU
➡️ This is somewhat big news and I was quite surprised there wasn't more chatter about this, but the online commerce and payments company Dot has raised $23.4M in a Series B round led by global fintech payment gateway PayU along with InfoEdge and Google.
➡️ One of the company's main product, Digital Showroom, has over 4.5M registered merchants who use the platform to sell online for the first time. The platform lets merchants receive orders, accept payments and leverage delivery partners for logistics.
➡️ A recent trend that I've seen specifically in Delhi is for established restaurants (who have an existing customer base) are guiding users to use their DotPe systems (rather than using Zomato or Swiggy) to order food. In Delhi, it seems like they have also been partnering with Pidge to fulfill deliveries.
➡️ Restaurants, thus, don't have to pay Zomato or Swiggy their ~20% rake and only have to (presumably) pay the payment gateway charges and the delivery costs (which they probably pass on to the consumers).
➡️ Given that PayU is one of the largest payment gateways in the country, I assume Dot is also using them and thus the team at PayU knows exactly how well the company is doing and that could have been the possible reason for the new round.
Feedback & ❤️ always appreciated BONUS (Tweet of the day): https://twitter.com/Mittermaniac/status/1375060043737931776
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