The investors include WestBridge Capital and existing backers.

“With this financing, we will double down on growth investments in India and North America, start building in APAC (Asia-Pacific) and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), add new offerings to our product portfolio and fund acquisitions. To support our growth, we plan to double our headcount in the next 18 months,” said LeadSquared founder and CEO Nilesh Patel said.

Founded a decade ago, LeadSquared helps improve the efficiency and sales performance of companies. It helps them improve marketing, call centre, inside sales, field sales, and other feet-on-street teams, including verifications, collections, and vendor onboarding. The firm claims it serves over 2,000 clients.

“LeadSquared has shown a remarkable ability to scale and grow efficiently. Its focus on building a platform that transforms sales processes through automation has significant potential for growth in the global market,” said Sumir Chadha, co-founder and MD of WestBridge Capital.

LeadSquared was founded in 2011 by Patel, Prashant Singh, Sudhakar Gorti and Anand Kumar. Its first external institutional investment came in May 2019 when it raised $3 million in Series A led by Stakeboat Capital.

It later raised multiple rounds, including $32 million in Series B led by Gaja Capital in December 2020.

LeadSquared competes with the likes of Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Zoho. The firm’s clients include Byju’s, Amity University, OLX, Dunzo, Practo, Poonawalla Fincorp, and Godrej Housing Finance.

LeadSquared also has operations in the US, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia, and Indonesia.

“LeadSquared is fast emerging as a category leader in high-velocity sales execution software. Nilesh and the team have built a strong platform with robust unit economics. With this round, the company has the balance sheet strength to further invest for growth in India as well as international markets, especially the US,” said Gaja Capital’s managing partner Gopal Jain

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Online learning platform Byju’s has raised $122 million or Rs 908.9 crores from DST Global in its ongoing Series F round. The investment fund floated by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Byju’s was founded by Byju Raveendran.

This was first reported by Entrackr. Edtech companies like Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu, Toppr, and Class Plus nearly effortlessly acquiring users and raising funds amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and lockdown.

According to some reports Byju’s was in talks with the Hongkong-headquartered VC firm to raise around $400 million.

The company is allotting 42,666 Series F preference shares at an issue price of Rs 213,042.13 per share for this deal and shows regulatory filings. Post allotment, DST will command a 1.2% stake in the ed-tech startup.

With this, Byju’s has raised $545 million across four tranches in Series F round in 2020 including a $200 million each from Tiger Global and General Atlantic.

As of now, the firm has raised over $1.3 billion from the likes of Tencent, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sofina, and Lightspeed. Since March, it has raised $145 million across two tranches.

The promoters group at Byju’s that includes its founder Byju Raveendran, his wife Divya Gokulnath, and brother Riju Raveendran, retain close to 33.1% stake in the company worth nearly $3.3 billion. Prior to the latest capital infusion, the promoters owned a 33.45% stake in the ed-tech company.

Earlier this month it was reported that DST Global is close to investing as $400 million in Byju’s. The round appears to be an ongoing one and DST may invest more money in the ed-tech startup.

It has raised $400 million earlier this year was last funded by Bond Capital co-founded by Silicon Valley investment guru, Mary Meeker, formerly of Kleiner Perkins. Its rivals such as Unacademy, Vedantu, Toppr, and others are also fast-tracking their investments.

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Indian online learning giant Byju’s has acquired ed-tech startup WhiteHat Jr. for $300 million as it looks to expand its dominant reach in the country. The all-cash deal makes 18-month-old WhiteHat Jr., which offers online coding classes to school-going students in India and the U.S., the fastest exit story at this size in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Mumbai based WhiteHat Jr., which had raised about $11 million from Omidyar Network, Owl Ventures, and Nexus Venture Partners claims it has achieved an annual revenue run rate of $150 million. It will continue to operate as a separate entity for now, according to Byju’s spokesperson.

The founder of WhiteHat Jr., Karan Bajaj stated.“We started WhiteHat Jr. to make kids creators instead of consumers of technology. Technology is at the center of every human interaction today and we had set out to create a coding curriculum that was being delivered live and connected students and teachers like never before.”

Byju’s will make significant investments in WhiteHat Jr’s technology platform, product innovation while expanding the teacher base to cater to demand from new markets according to an official statement. Karan Bajaj will continue to lead and scale this business in India and the US.

“WhiteHat Jr is the leader in the live online coding space. Karan has proven his mettle as an exceptional founder and the credit goes to him and his team for creating coding programs that are loved by kids. Under his leadership the company has achieved phenomenal growth in India and the US in a short span of time,” said Byju Raveendran, founder, and chief executive of Byju’s.

Byju’s, which was backed by Mary Meeker’s Bond last month, is currently valued at $10.5 billion.

The purchase of WhiteHat Jr is also Byju’s largest acquisition, to date. It had previously acquired Osmo, a US-based learning platform, for which it paid $120 million, in January 2019. At the time, the deal was said to be part of the Bengaluru-based firm’s plan to aggressively expand internationally. Before that, Byju’s had acquired Math Adventures, TutorVista, and Vidyarthi.

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Indian online education startup Byju’s is set to become India’s second most valuable startup after Alibaba group holding- backed financial payments brand, Paytm. DST Global, the investment firm headed by billionaire Yuri Milner, is close to investing as $400 million in Byju’s, according to various sources.

This deal could be signed as early as this weekend and it values Byju’s at $10.5 billion.

Yuri Milner Russian-Israeli billionaire, is one of the world’s best-known Technology investors. is an early backer of the largest internet firms including Alibaba, Facebook INC. and Twitter INC. His firm also funded high profile Indian startups like Flipkart online services, Ola, Swiggy, and business E-Commerce startup Udaan.

DST and Byju’s both haven’t responded about the funding talks and a DST spokesperson declined to comment on it.

Byju’s which became popular by simplifying Math and science concepts for kindergarten to 12th students through games and videos has investors including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Naspers Ltd. and Tiger Global Management.

This Smartphone app was conceived by Byju Raveendran, former teacher and son of educators in 2011. Byju’s now has over 57 million registered users and over 3.5 million paid subscribers. It is adding over 300 thousand new subscribers every month. Byju’s doubled revenues in the year ending March 2020 to 20 billion rupees and is profitable compared to the previous financial year.

 Byju’s has raised $400 million this year alone and was last funded by Bond Capital co-founded by Silicon Valley investment guru, Mary Meeker, formerly of Kleiner Perkins. Its rivals are also trying to catch up. Last month, online learning startup Vedantu raised $100 million from U.S.-based investor Coatue Management. Unacademy, another leading startup is said to be raising funds at a valuation of over $1 billion, which would make it the country’s second edtech unicorn.

This story has been gathered through various sources and modified.

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Verlinvest, a large Belgian family-owned, consumer-focused, diversification investment holding company, has invested in BYJU’S, the most popular edtech startup in India. This new round will help boost BYJU’S international expansion and acquisition plans.

As per media reports, Verlinvest pumped US$30 million although the company has not made public the actual size of the deal.

The Bangalore-based startup has raised over US$170 million in multiple rounds from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (run by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg), IFC, Sequoia India, and Sofina.

Nicholas Cator, Executive Director, Verlinvest, sais, “We are very happy to partner with the talented team at BYJU’S to expand in India and abroad. A 1:1 learning experience is a dream ratio, and it is very encouraging to see that an Indian company has created a product which closely addresses this need by offering engaging and personalized learning experiences enabled by technology. We have seen a lot of edtech companies, but BYJU’S offers personalized learning to an extent which we haven’t seen in any product across the globe. We look forward to supporting the management team to expand to new markets and to further build the brand.”

Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO, BYJU’S, said, “Our partnership with Verlinvest will further boost our aspiration to change the way students learn across the globe. In the last 18 months, we have witnessed exponential growth in India. While these numbers are very exciting, there is a long way to go before we can call it a revolution. The fact that we are still reaching to less than 1% of the student population, shows the immense potential and the impact we can create. In fact, our teams are continuously working towards creating learning products that will enable our efforts to make learning more accessible, engaging and personalized for students.”

Started in 2015, BYJU’S is the creator of India’s largest K-12 learning app which offers adaptive, engaging and learning programs for students in classes 4-12 (K-12) and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT.

BYJU’s has become the most loved and preferred education app for students across age groups with 8 million users and 4,00,000 annual paid subscriptions. With an average time of 40 minutes being spent by a student on the app every day from 1,700-plus cities and towns, the BYJU’S app is making learning enjoyable and effective.

Founded in 1995, Verlinvest is a private Belgian family investment company with offices in Brussels, New York and Singapore. Verlinvest specializes in growth capital with the objective to diversify its investors’ holdings for the long term by making private investments in branded consumer companies in the F&B, retail & hospitality, consumer digital and education segments. Some of its portfolio companies include Vitacoco, Sula wines, Future group, Lazada, XSEED and Global Fashion Group.

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