Shubham Saroj
Vedantu is the 3rd startup fighting to capture the EdTech industry
Introduction – Vedantu is an Indian online tutoring platform where teachers provide tuitions to students over the internet, using a real-time virtual learning environment named WAVE (Whiteboard Audio Video Environment) a technology that was built in-house.
It is said to operate on a marketplace model for teachers, where students can browse, discover and choose to learn from an online tutor. It is headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
Early Days – Incorporated in 2011, Bangalore-based Vedantu Innovations Pvt. Ltd. is an online tutoring platform launched in October 2014. The company’s name Vedantu is said to be derived from Sanskrit words Veda which means knowledge and Tantu which means network.
The organization is run by 4 friends from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) who are as follows:-
- Vamsi Krishna (Co-Founder & CEO),
- Pulkit Jain (Co-Founder & Head of Product),
- Saurabh Saxena (Co-Founder & Head of Academics) and
- Anand Prakash (Co-Founder).
Vedantu is their second venture after Lakshya, a test preparation coaching company. Lakshya was acquired by a public listed company, MT Educare in the year 2012. It primarily provides services to students of grade 4th to 12th for Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) & Central Board of Secondary Education.
Currently the company’s primary business is live online tutoring in Hindi, English, Sanskrit, German, French, Environmental Science and Social Science. It uses White board audio video education (WAVE) method for their 1 on 1 student teacher live sessions.
It also claims to provide test preparation courses for Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Foundation, National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) and Problem Solving Assessment (PSA).
Marketing Strategy – Aamir Khan is the brand ambassador of Vedantu. Their marketing campaigns focused on making learning easy and fun for all the students so that it’s easy to learn and remember educational stuff.
They used hastags in their campaigns like:-
- #SamajhAyega
- #MazaAyega
Funding – Vedantu has raised a total of $190.9 Million in funding over 9 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jul 15, 2020 from a Series D round. Vedantu is funded by 9 investors. The investors are as follows:-
- WestBridge Capital
- Tiger Global Management
- GGV Capital
- Omidyar Network
- Coatue
- KB Global Platform Fund
- Accel
- Trifecta Capital Advisors
User Base & Valuation – According to their website, they have more than 38,879,714 happy students who have enrolled in Vedantu. They also have more than 20,182,347 hours of live learning for their students. Lastly, they are present in more than 500 cities. They also have more than 1 crore downloads on the Google play store.
The above statistics prove that they have a solid user base which is growing each and every day. Currently the company is valued at $600 million but this valuation could be further boosted to $800 million or even $1 billion if they receive a fresh round of funding. This means that they are on the verge of becoming a Unicorn.
Revenues & Losses – Vedantu has reported a 6x increase in its losses to INR 158.5 Cr while its revenue stood at INR 35.8 Cr in the financial year that ended in March 2020. The company spent about INR 194.3 Cr to earn operating revenue of INR 24.6 Cr in FY20.
This means that the company is still in loss and is solely operating through the funding which they received from their investors.
Acquisitions – So far they Vedantu has acquired only 1 startup named Instasolv.
Awards – Vendatu has received the following awards which are as follows:-
- In 2016, Vedantu was named as one of the winners of KINSES2016 EduAwards.
- Vedantu was also named among the top 100 startups to watch in 2016 by SutraHR.
- Vedantu was also awarded as the Online Education Start-up of the Year in 2015 by elets World Education Summit.
- In 2015, Vedantu was also given the award of “Most Promising and Innovative Live Online Tutoring Platform in India” by Praxis Media.
Present Time & Future Goals – Vedantu just recently said that it expects its revenue run rate to more than double to $200 million and hit profitability by June 2022. Vedantu has seen month-on-month revenue growth of 50% in April and May this year. Its revenue grew 4x in May 2021 over last year and its current revenue run rate is at about $60 million.
The company has also rolled out a VIP program aka (Vedantu Improvement Promise), which consists of two things. 1st, a guarantee to improve academic performance of the kid. 2nd, return of the fees if parents are not satisfied.
VIP’s best part is that it is no hidden terms and conditions. Even if an internal assessment shows progress in child’s learning but parents feel otherwise, the startup would refund the entire fees.
There would be no question asked. The point is not 100% fee back. It’s about taking responsibility. In short, now Vedantu is trying to beat their competitors by doing whatever it takes to achieve success.
Conclusion – To sum it up, Vendatu has grown up to be quite a big company and is the front runner for being a leading educational platform in India that imparts quality education.
But there’s a problem. They are not alone in providing quality education as there are various other startups that are in the same race and are providing almost the same products and services in similar manner. We have already covered startups like Unacademy and Byju’s. Do check them out.
These 2 startups are now big giant corporations that are equipped with almost everything that they need to become a front runner in digital education. These 2 startups are the biggest corporations that Vendatu will have to face in the marketplace.
Especially Byju’s as they have now become the most valued Indian startup with a valuation of $16.5 billion after several rounds of funding. It would be quite interesting to see that who will be the winner among the three of these startups.
Who do you think will be the best among these three? Comment down below and tell us. Your comments are valuable to us and we will reply to them if we find them interesting.
