Edtech unicorn Byju's has raised a fresh round of funding worth $250 million (around Rs 2,000 crore) from existing investors, days after it announced it would let go of 2,500 employees.
The startup did not disclose the valuation at which it raised the funding, though its last round was done at a valuation of $22 billion in March. The company also did not disclose the name of the investors in the current round.
The edtech platform's Founder and Chief Executive Officer Byju Raveendran said the capital that will now be invested "will result in profitable growth".
"Regardless of the adverse macroeconomic conditions, 2022-23 is set to be our best year in terms of revenue, growth and profitability. Continued support from our esteemed investors reaffirms the impact created by us so far, and validates our path to profitability," he said.
On Oct. 12, the company had put out a statement saying that it has "embarked on a path to achieve group-level profitability" by March 2023.
It said it will use a three-pronged approach:
Consolidating all its K-10 India subsidiaries into one unit to leverage their synergies.
Aakash Education and Great Learning to operate as standalone independent units.
Re-targeting marketing budget towards its overseas markets.
It had also stated that the group will not focus on door-to-door and on-ground sales of its courses. Instead, it would expand its Inside Sales team to pursue leads via phone, email and video calls.
The company had also announced plans to cut nearly 2,500 jobs across different functions in an attempt to avoid redundancies.
Around 5% of Byju's 50,000-strong workforce is expected to be rationalised across product, content, media, and technology teams, which will help it to leverage technology "better", it said in a statement.
The funding comes only four days after peer Vedantu spent over Rs 300 crore to buy a majority stake in test preparation platform Deeksha.
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