Indian edtech player Eruditus gets $113m Series D
Eruditus, an Indian education technology provider focused on working professionals, has raised a $113 million Series D round featuring Sequoia Capital India.
Leeds Illuminate, a US investor specializing in education and workforce development, and Prosus Ventures, formerly a VC arm of South Africa's Naspers, led the round. US-based Ved Capital and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative also participated. It follows a $40 million Series C last year led by Sequoia India.
Eruditus offers a mix of on-campus, off-campus, and online products catering to professionals who want to expand ther skills but cannot access full-time courses. It has partnered with more than 30 universities globally to date, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Columbia, Harvard, Cambridge, INSEAD, and Wharton. Its Asian presence focuses on India and China, including a partnership with Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST). Courses are available in Mandarin.
The company will use the fresh capital to expand its university network in emerging markets and develop new products targeting a post-pandemic market. "COVID-19 is dramatically accelerating change across higher education,” Ashwin Damera, co-founder and CEO of Eruditus, said in a statement. “We are engaging more deeply with universities worldwide to help them expand their online portfolio and global footprint.”
Eruditus claims to have enrolled more than 50,000 students in the past 12 months and positions itself as a leader in a global professional education market worth $280 billion. The company has around 650 employees across offices in Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Boston, San Francisco, Dubai, and Mexico City. It plans to build out its product offering, which includes more than 100 courses in 80 countries, through various data technology upgrades.
"Eruditus' goals are a great match for ours – democratizing access of quality resources for a much broader audience,” Ashutosh Sharma, head of India investments at Prosus, added. “The value of the teachings of the great institutions has been rationed to those who can physically and monetarily access their facilities. Eruditus unlocks those assets and enables those institutions to help a whole new cohort of learners around the globe.”
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