Elearning Platform Edureka Raises $2 Mn From Leo Capital To Fuel Its Growth Plans

Bengaluru-based elearning platform Edureka has raised $2 Mn from Leo Capital, a venture capital fund known for investing in technology companies. Being bootstrapping till now, Edureka has opened its door to investment for the first time, to fulfill its aggressive growth plans and to bring senior expertise on board.

Founded in 2011, Edureka works with the mission to make learning easy, interesting and accessible to learners across the globe. The platform, with its instructor-led training provides education in trending technologies like Big Data, Cloud Computing, Blockchain and Data Science. The platform also provides short term courses along with 24*7 lifetime support.

Lovleen Bhatia, Co-Founder & CEO, Edureka, said, “Edureka is a consumer-first company which believes in creating value for all our stakeholders. In long run, we will continue to focus on scaling up our team, enhancing our core product and improving customer experience.”

Post this investment, Rajul Garg, Founder and Managing Partner of Leo Capital India, who is an entrepreneur turned investor and founded companies like Pine Labs and GlobalLogic, will join the board of Edureka.

With this funding round, Edureka is planning to expand global reach and accelerate growth and innovation. The company also aims to achieve 6X growth in the next three years.

Edureka claims to have witnessed 3X growth in the last three years and has expanded its community to over 100 countries.

Rajul said, “We have long believed in the growth potential of elearning, especially when it comes to bridging the skill-gap in the IT industry. We are confident that Edureka will capitalise on the global demand to become the dominant player in this market and we look forward to helping them achieve this goal.”

A joint study by Google and KPMG had recently reported that online education will be a $2 Bn Industry in India by 2021. India is in fact the third largest online market for education in the world. The report further adds that the growth will be backed by a rise in paid users—currently 1.6 Mn and estimated to grow to 9.5 Mn in 2021.

Re-skilling and online certification courses are currently the dominant categories with a 38% share, according to the same report.

Other major players in this space include the BYJU’S, Coursera, Unacademy, Edukart and Embibe. Unacademy raised $11.5 Mn in Series B round of funding led by Sequoia. BYJU’S raised over $30 Mn from Verlinvest and $40 Mn from Tencent.

Online education is growing in India but poor digital infrastructure and low completion rates are the challenges that people get to face in this sector. Also, many online courses are self-placed and the students are not able to interact which leads to high drop-off rates.