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Conventional learning and teaching methodologies result in several inadequacies when it comes to imparting education. The major problem with classroom education is that it is never equipped enough to match every student's learning pace and abilities.
Vedantu resolves this problem through personalized, 'live' online tutoring. It ensures every student associated with it is under the guidance of a dedicated teacher, and that every session on its platform is interactive, intuitive, and interesting. Launched in 2011, Vedantu has become immensely popular among students. It has mentored over 40,000 students from all over India.
Vedantu Highlights
- Startup Name-Vedantu
- Headquarters-Bangalore
- Founders-Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain and Anand Prakash
- Sector-Edtech
- Founded-2011
- Valuation-$1 bn+ (November 2021)
- Revenue-$11.96 mn (Rs 93.7 crore in FY21)
- Total Funding raised-$290.9 mn (November 2021)
- Parent Organization-Vedantu Innovations Private Limited
- Website-vedantu.com
About Vedantu
- Vedantu is India’s leading Edtech startup in the domain of online tutoring. It offers personalized coaching for students in grades 6 to 12 with highly skilled teachers guiding them. Vedantu's efficient, customized teaching methodologies include two-way audio, video, and white-boarding technologies to enhance the learning outcomes with live student-teacher interactions. The Bengaluru-based edtech company caters to students for competitive examinations and co-curricular modules as well. The cooperative sessions keep the students engaged according to the pace of the lecture, an aspect that is absent in recorded video lectures and classroom education. Vedantu offers video sessions that support even low internet bandwidth. With its powerful learning management tools and holistic training approach, Vedantu appears to be the finest online educational service provider in the K-12 segment.
Vedantu - Founders and Team
Vamsi Krishna, Saurabh Saxena, Pulkit Jain, Anand Prakash - Vedantu Founders
Vedantu Founders
Vedantu was founded by Vamsi Krishna (co-founder, CEO), Pulkit Jain (co-founder, head of product), Anand Prakash (co-founder, head of academics) and Saurabh Saxena
Vamsi Krishna
- Vedantu co-founder and CEO Vamsi Krishna completed his B.Tech from IIT Bombay in 2005 and co-founded Lakshya Institute — an educational enterprise that prepares students for engineering and medical entrance exams — with three more IITians: Saurabh Saxena, Pulkit Jain, and Anand Prakash. The four individuals have mentored 10,000+ students and trained more than 200 teachers through Lakshya. Vamsi, Saurabh, Pulkit, and Anand continued to work on Lakshya for nearly eight years until it was acquired by MT Educare in 2012.
Anand Prakash
- Anand Prakash serves as the co-founder and Academic Head at Vedantu. Prakash was the Manager of Abhishek Industries before he founded Lakshya Institute and then Vedantu along with the other founders. Prakash is an alumnus of IIT Roorkee, from where he completed his BTech. degree in Paper and Pulp Technology.
Pulkit Jain
- Vedantu co-founder Pulkit Jain has a Btech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Roorkee. He joined Evalueserve as a Business Analyst before co-founding Lakshya Institute and eventually establishing Vedantu with the other co-founders.
Saurabh Saxena
- Saurabh Saxena is another co-founder of Vedantu. Saurabh Saxena served as the Head of Academics and exited Vedantu in January 2018. Saxena was a Chemical Engineering student at IIT Roorkee who completed his BTech from the same college. Starting his career by founding Lakshya Institute, Saxena later co-founded Vedantu. On exiting the company Saxena founded Uable, where he is currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer. Saurabh had a brief stint as the Director of Ekya Schools.
Vedantu - Vision and Mission
- With highly trained teachers and a technology-driven academic setup, Vedantu ensures a great learning experience for each of its students. Vedantu focuses on providing quality education and comprehensive analysis of students’ interaction and engagement in the class through online assessments and tests; hence, the progress of students is closely monitored. Through its instinctive, next-generation platform WAVE (Whiteboard Audio Video Environment), Vedantu fulfills its objective of fostering online education in an unparalleled manner.
- Vedantu's vision is to transform the teaching and learning experience through the synergy of superior technology with worthy content and proficient teachers.
Vedantu - Name, Tagline, and Logo
- The name ‘Vedantu’ is the result of combining the words 'Veda' and 'Tantu'. 'Veda' means knowledge and 'Tantu' means network; thus, Vedantu acts as a network of wisdom. Vedantu's tagline is “Live Online Tutoring”.
Vedantu - Startup Story
- The story of Vedantu has the story of the four IITians and the story of Lakshya at its core. It was Vamsi Krishna who took the initial initiative along with the other IITians and founded the primary venture and named it "Lakshya" in 2006. IIT Roorkee Btech graduates - Saurabh Saxena, Anand Prakash, Pulkit Jain, and Vamsi Krishna, started Lakshya Institute with an aim to train for a wide variety of tests and exams. However, they eventually realized that to up the game they needed something beyond the brick and mortar institute and this would be done only by leveraging technology and the internet. Such an institute would be online and scalable.
- They found that to establish an online education platform they would be needing dedicated and skilled teachers. Therefore, they soon started working on it through Lakshya. Finally, they sold Lakshya to MT Educare Ltd, which purchased 51% stakes in the educational platform in 2012. Vedantu was formed in 2011.
Vedantu - Funding and Investors
- Vedantu has raised around $290.9 million in funding to date. Vedantu had witnessed a total of 10 rounds of funding. This surge can be attributed to the growing importance of the Edtech segment, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Furthermore, the company is aiming to raise $150 million from a fresh round of funding in 2021, according to the sources close to the Vedantu on request of anonymity. The round would be led by the existing investors that include Coatue, Tiger Global, and Accel among others. The talks are at an initial and with no term sheet disclosed as of now.
- Vedantu is finally successful in raising their new round, which helped the company infuse around $100 mn on September 29, 2021. The earlier talks, which predicted Tiger Global, Accel, and Coatue as investors, came out to be true. However, the round was actually led by Temasek-backed private equity firm ABC World Asia, along with the contributions from other existing investors like Coatue Management, Tiger Global, GGV Capital, and WestBridge. With this funding round, Vedantu steered to emerge as a unicorn, becoming the 27th unicorn of India in 2021 after Apna. Furthermore, Vedantu has seized the 69th spot among the Indian startups that crossed the $1 bn mark.
Vedantu - Achievements
- Vedantu was recognized as the 'Best Organization to Develop Technology for Education' by DNA Innovative Education Awards in February 2016. It was also one of the winners of 'KINSES 2016 EduAwards'. Elets World Education Summit awarded Vedantu the title of 'Online Education Startup of the Year', and Praxis Media presented the 'Most Promising and Live Online Tutoring Platform in India' award to Vedantu in 2015.
- The founders of Vedantu - Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain and Anand Prakash, were chosen to be the winners of the Comeback Kid title in the ET Startup Awards in August 2020.
Vedantu - Startup Challenges
- Vedantu was initially launched to solve the challenges of the offline learning model. The edtech sector is growing with accomplished players like Byju's, Upgrad, and Unacademy, which are giving constantly throwing in numerous growth challenges to Vedantu.
Vedantu Layoffs
- Vedantu laid off 200 employees, as per reports dated May 5, 2022. While responding to its layoff, Vedantu's spokesperson replied that Vedantu has 6000+ employees out of which 120 contractors and 80 full-timers, which constitute 3.5% of the total strength were being reassessed. Adding to it, the person also stated that Vedantu has an annual contract with them, which begins at the start of each academic year. Furthermore, the spokesperson also added that the company will soon be hiring 1000+ employees in numerous teams of Vedantu, which will include over 100 members for similar positions that will be left vacant.
- Vedantu layoffs witnessed a second round in the same month. As per the reports dated May 18, 2022, the edtech company parted with 424 more employees out of the total strength of 5900 Vedans, announced one of the Vedantu founders, Vamsi Krishna, who is also the CEO of the company. Vamsi Krishna said that it was "an extremely difficult call to make". He further added that with the war in Europe and impending fears of recession, Fed rate interest hikes, and more, the situation is tough and might also see a decline in the company's capital in the forthcoming quarters. Furthermore, while speaking about the employees who will be sacked, Krishna announced that they will get extended health benefits till August 5, 2022, access to 15 doctor consultations, and discounted pathology and pharmaceutical services via Practo till April 29, 2023.
- After it has already terminated 624 employees, Vedantu again laid off 100 employees in July 2022, allegedly to restructure its business. Vedantu asked its full-time employees from numerous teams to put down their papers between July 4-9th 2022, according to the reports. The teams of sales, training, and more of Vedantu were impacted by this set of layoffs. The laid-off employees will get a 2-month salary as severance pay, as per reports dated August 3, 2022.
Vedantu - Competitors
Vedantu's top competitors are -
- Byju’s
- Toppr
- Unacademy
- Eruditus
- upGrad
- Lead
- Physics Wallah
However, new rivals are emerging every other day with the advancements in the edtech segment.
Vedantu - Growth and Revenue
- Vedantu generates revenue by providing paid educational services. Vedantu has recorded Rs 93.7 crore in operational revenues recently in FY21. The revenue from operations increased considerably from Rs 24.6 crore in FY20. The revenue from operations of Vedantu before that, in FY19, was registered at Rs 10.44 crore.
- The total expenses of Vedantu also rose rapidly along with its revenues. The total expenditure of Vedantu was recorded at Rs 736.13 crore in FY21, which rose from Rs 185.97 crore in FY20. The Vedantu expenses earlier grew by 66% from Rs 25.31 crore in FY18 to become Rs 39.4 crore in FY19.
- Vedantu has also seen its losses pump up to Rs 150.13 crore in FY20, which was Rs 27.31 crore in FY19. These losses climbed again to stand at Rs 604.28 crore in FY21.
- Going by the Vednatu revenue and assessing it on a unit level, Vedantu has been found to have spent Rs 7.86 in order to earn a single unit of revenue. Vedantu proved to have the highest revenue to expense ratio in FY21.
- Vedantu usually sees a 2X growth yearly, as per the Co-founder and CEO of the company Vamsi Krishna. Furthermore, the Edtech platform claims to have grown by 4X amidst the pandemic. COVID-19 actually helped to accelerate the growth here when people started to look forward to alternative learning options than the regular classroom sessions.
- The Bengaluru-based Edtech startup that initially had a skeleton crew of four friends had around 1328 employees in 2020, a 133% increase from 2019.
Some of the growth highlights of Vedantu are:
- It offers more than 2.1 crore hours of live learning
- Vedantu boasts of having 10+ lakh monthly Youtube views
- It promises to resolve 25+ lakh doubts via the Vedantu app
- Vedantu brings LIVE classes opportunities for students from across 57+ countries
Vedantu offers subscriptions ranging from INR 100 to INR 5000 for different grades and also provides courses for competitive examinations such as JEE, NEET, NTSE, IMO, PSA, KVPY, and others. The company utilizes its revenue for various operations like acquiring talented teachers, advertisements and promotions, and employee benefits expenses to support its growth.
Vedantu - Acquisitions
- On July 15, 2021, Vedantu acquired Pedagogy, an Edtech startup from Ahmedabad in a cash and stock deal. This is the second acquisition by Vedantu after it has acquired Instasolv, a doubt-solving platform, in February this year. According to the fillings by Vedantu, both the companies have agreed to share the purchase agreement where Vedantu will be acquiring a 100% stake in Pedagogy across five tranches.
Vedantu - Future Plans
- Vedantu's future plans include the creation of distinct categories for primary children, starting from kindergarten. Infusing learning with enjoyment and making learning accessible to the students of remote areas is Vedantu's supreme strategy. With 1 million lifetime learners and 4x growth in 2020, the company will explore new prospects and engage in expedient educational services in the future.
- Vedantu eyes $200 million by next year's June, disclosed the company on Friday, June 25, 2021. The company has already witnessed around a 4x increase in its revenue run rate on May 2021 and is currently operating at a revenue run rate of USD 60 million. Vedantu, which is competing with biggies like Byju's, has also seen its month-on-month revenue grow 50% in April and May 2021.
- “Impact at Scale is our singular driver. With a core focus on Learning Experience and Outcomes, the impact that we have had on our learners drives us in our next phase of exponential growth. As we continue to grow our student enrolments by 4.5x year on year, we are gearing to invest in brand and entering very strongly in new categories of age group 4-10 years beyond current customer segments. We are excited to have GGV Capital back us, as a unique VC firm that has backed some of the world’s most successful companies, this is a huge validation for Vedantu. We want to further our mission to make this new format of LIVE Interactive classes the answer to the current engagement gaps in Online education and are very excited about the future,” said Vedantu CEO Vamsi Krishna while revealing the company's future plans after the GGV funding round in February 2020.
FAQs
What is Vedantu's Tagline?
- Vedantu's tagline is “Live Online Tutoring”.
How does Vedantu work?
- Vedantu is an online tutoring platform that provides live online masterclasses for the students to help them ace their examinations while they stay at home.
Who are the Founders of Vedantu?
- Vedantu was founded by Vamsi Krishna (co-founder, CEO), Saurabh Saxena, Pulkit Jain (co-founder, head product), and Anand Prakash (co-founder, head academics) where Saurabh exited the company in 2018.
How much is Vedantu's Revenue?
- Vedantu recorded Rs 93.7 crore in revenues in FY21, which increased from Rs 24.6 crore that it earned in FY20.
Who are the Top Competitors of Vedantu?
- Vedantu's top competitors are Byju’s, Toppr, Unacademy, Eruditus, Physics Wallah, Lead, upGrad and more.
What were the Vedantu layoffs in 2022?
- Vedantu had initially laid off around 200 employees on May 5th, 2022, and announced its second round of layoffs on May 18th, 2022, when the company parted with 424 more employees. The company again laid off 100 employees, who received their termination letters allegedly between July 4-9th 2022.
