Alpha Wave leads $57m round for India's Cuemath

All existing backers re-upped, including Lightrock India, Sequoia Capital India, Manta Ray Ventures, Kae Capital, Unitus, and CapitalG, formerly Google Capital.

The investment follows a USD 40.4m round led by Lightrock, then known as Lightstone, and brings total funding to more than USD 120m to date, according to AVCJ Research. It values Cuemath at USD 407m, which is said to represent a more than 2x lift versus the prior funding round.

“Valuations have become more realistic with rationalization hitting the market; only those growth-stage start-ups with solid business fundamentals can now establish trust with VC,” CEO Vivek Sunder said in a statement.

“Product innovation and personalization coupled with a low capex model augmented our global scale-up and beefed our conversion rates by 3x. With the best-in-class retention and acquisition engine, we have created a powerful combination of a sustainable and scalable business model.”

Cuemath describes itself as a student-first product with a parent-centric engagement model. It combines adaptive and visual learning techniques, relying on curriculum design input from math experts at the universities of Harvard, Stanford, and Cambridge and various Indian Institutes of Technology. The idea is to support accelerated math skill-building, intuition, and aptitude, as well as skills around coding, logic, and independent thinking.

The company said its platform has been used by more than 200,000 K-12 students globally. It claims differentiation from other education technology providers as a math specialist. This is said to have contributed to an 80% retention rate and about half of all new admissions coming via referrals. Anirudh Singh, a managing director at Alpha Wave, said the company had “high-quality” unit economics and teachers, as well as “a strong flywheel effect.”

The plan is to expand from a current reach of around 70 countries to more than 100 by the 2023 financial year, including developed and emerging regions. The fresh capital will be used to improve product-pedagogy outcomes and pursue growth initiatives including acquisitions, partnerships, and branding efforts. The overall vision is to become the leading math teaching platform globally.

India’s edtech space is an intensely competitive environment, arguably led by Byju’s, a diversified platform that raised USD 800m in March at a valuation of USD 22bn. In the past 12 months alone, at least four companies have closed rounds at valuations of more than USD 1bn, among them livestreaming app Vedantu, video-focused Unacademy, professional upskilling portal Eruditus, and B2B supplier Lead School.

Math specialists are rare but not unheard of. Google was active in this niche as recently as last November with a strategic investment of undisclosed size in Korea’s Mathpresso that brought its latest funding round to USD 105m. Mathpresso is best known for the mobile K-12 app Qanda, which has accumulated 56m users since its launch in 2016. The vast majority are outside of Korea.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Consumer
• Technology
• Media
• Expansion
• India
• Alpha Wave Global
• LGT Lightstone Aspada
• Sequoia Capital
• CapitalG
• Education
• TMT