Edtech Unicorn Eruditus Mulls Reverse Flipping To India Ahead Of Potential IPO

Singapore-based edtech startup, Eruditus, has now joined the growing list of Indian startups who are mulling reverse flipping or shifting the parent company’s registration back to India. The SoftBank-backed startup aims to list itself on the India stock exchange BSE or NSE in the coming years and is planning to redomicile its headquarters ahead of a potential initial public offering.

According to an ET report, the startup is in discussion with two of the four big firms – Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC –  to streamline the process of shifting its base.

The fresh development comes close on the heels of Eruditus’ existing investors SoftBank and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board expressing interest to invest around $70 Mn via a secondary in the startup. For the uninitiated, both the existing investors would have bought shares of Eruditus from other existing investors. ​​However, the secondary sale might happen at about $2.5 Bn, or a 20% discount, to Eruditus’ previous valuation of $3.2 Bn.

Besides, the startup also intended to raise another $70 Mn in a primary funding round, thus taking the entire funding round to $140 Mn – $150 Mn. 

Founded in 2010 by Ashwin Damera and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu, Eruditus offers executive education programmes with global business schools such as Columbia, MIT, London Business School, Harvard Business School, INSEAD, Tuck at Dartmouth, among others. 

Besides international courses, the startup offers courses from Indian institutions such as IIT Kozhikode, IIM Lucknow and BML Munjal University.

Unicorns In Queue To Reverse Flip

The fresh development came almost a week after another Indian unicorn LivSpace expressed its intention to shift its base from Singapore to India. Similar to Eruditus, LivSpace intends to list itself in Indian stock exchanges in 2025 and has initiated internal processes for the same. The startup wants to shift its base in the next 9-12 months. 

Last year, several unicorns including Pine Labs, Udaan, Meesho, Groww and Razorpay were among the startups looking to shift their bases to India.

However, Walmart-backed PhonePe is the only Indian startup which has completed the process to move its domicile back to India in 2022.

These startups went abroad to help in funding and benefit from the foreign tax policies. However, the Indian government has been actively working on new regulations to enhance the business environment and promote the ease of doing business.