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Silicon Valley based Sequoia Capital seems to have made the best return from its Indian portfolio, after having reportedly sold the partial stake in the e-learning unicorn company Byju’s.
According to Economic Times (ET), Sequoia Capital has offloaded 7% stake in the Bengaluru based e-learning company to incoming investors Naspers Ventures and General Atlantic (GA). ET further claims that Sequoia has pocketed $190 Mn from this transaction.
The development comes barely few hours after Byju’s raised $540 Mn in a fresh funding round led by Naspers. The latest fund raising round has valued Byju’s around $3.2 billion, which is a significant jump from the previous valuation of $1 Bn.
After the partial stake sale, Sequoia will continue to hold nearly 13-15% stake in the company, as per ET. This means the Silicon Valley headquartered VC firm will still remain amongst the largest shareholders of the company.
Sequoia and Byju’s have so far not commented on this news report.
Sequoia had invested in Byju’s way back in 2015, when the latter had successfully pivoted from being a physical coaching class to an online edutech player.
Apart from Byju’s, Sequoia has backed unicorn startups like Oyo Rooms, Zomato and Mu Sigma.
Meanwhile, there seem to be no stopping for Byju’s as it will now be counted among the top 5 valued tech startups of India. Following the latest funding, the unicorn startup is now gearing to target the international markets like U.S, U.K and other English speaking countries, according to a statement released by the company.
The company also seems to be well placed as far as growth and revenue is concerned. The company has been growing at 100% annually for the last three financial years and recently surpassed Rs 100 crore in monthly revenue.
“While near-term profitability is important for us, as a company our main focus continues to be on long-term sustainable growth,” Byju Raveendran (Byju’s founder) said in a statement.
