Vedantu is an Indian multinational online tutoring platform launched in 2014 based in Bengaluru, India. It primarily provides services to students in grades 4 to 12.
History
The company was launched in 2014.[1] Its name, Vedantu, is derived from the Sanskrit words Veda (knowledge) and Tantu (network).[2] The organization is run by IIT alumni Vamsi Krishna (co-founder and CEO), Pulkit Jain (co-founder and head of product), Saurabh Saxena (co-founder) and Anand Prakash (co-founder and head of academics).[3][4][5] Earlier, the team founded Lakshya, which was acquired by MT Educare (a subsidiary of Zee Learn) in 2012.
In 2019, Vedantu suffered a data breach exposing the data of about 687,000 users, including email addresses, IP addresses, names, phone numbers, genders and passwords.[8]
In January 2022, the company joined Byju's, Simplilearn, Unacademy, PrepInsta Prime and upGrad and became one of the founding members of IAMAI's India EdTech Consortium.[9] In March 2022, it launched W.A.V.E 2.0, an interactive platform that aims to support Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning.[10]
Vedantu reported a net loss of ₹696 crore in financial year 2022.[11]
In February 2024, Vedantu collaborated with TagHive to introduce new learning solutions.[12]
Funding
The firm raised its first round of funding after six months of the current operational format. In its series A funding, the firm has raised US$5 million from Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management.[13][14] It plans to utilize the funding to develop technology solutions for tablets and mobile with scalability, which can run hundreds of live learning sessions concurrently.[15] Vedantu raised US$11 million in a series B funding round led by Silicon Valley impact investment firm Omidyar Network and also contributed by its existing investor Accel Partners.[16]
On 29 August 2019, Vedantu announced that it had raised US$42 million in a series C financing round for expansion in India.[17]
In July 2020, Vedantu raised US$100 million in funding led by US-based Coatue. With the latest funding, Vedantu's total fund tally is over US$200 million.[18] According to Fintrackr calculations, in September 2021, Vedantu raised US$100 million at a post-money valuation of over US$500 million.[19]
Due to reduced funding for Indian startups, Vedantu laid off one hundred employees in July 2022, making 720 redundancies for 2022.[20] It further laid off 350 more people from its team in December 2022.[21]
Acquisitions
In February 2021, Vedantu made its first acquisition by acquiring Instasolv in an undisclosed deal. Vedantu had invested US$2 million in Instasolv in July 2020.[22]
In July 2021, it invested in AI-enabled learning platform Pedagogy.[23]
