Classplus bags $70 mn in Series D round co-led by Alpha Wave, Tiger Global

Classplus, the B2B edtech startup that helps educators and content creators launch and scale their online coaching businesses, has bagged $70 million in a Series D round co-led by Alpha Wave Global and Tiger Global. This new round of growth capital comes only 8 months after Classplus raised a $65 million series C funding in June 2021.

As part of the round, Abu Dhabi based Chimera Ventures has come in as a new investor while existing investor, RTP Global, has doubled down on their investment in the NCR-headquartered company. The new round values Classplus close to $600 million, a more than 2X jump in the valuation from the previous round.

Founded in 2018 by Mukul Rustagi and Bhaswat Agarwal, Classplus is a mobile-first SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform that allows educators and content creators to build their online presence, digitize their offline tuition centres and sell their courses online. It has seen massive adoption from not just academic educators from K-12 and exam prep categories but also non-academic content creators from categories like fitness & lifestyle, personal finance, language training and programming amongst others.

“Over the last few years, Classplus has established itself as a market leader and has created a highly differentiated and sophisticated technology product, while building a robust management team,”  said Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder, Alpha Wave. “We like that the company can successfully cater to the large offline market of educators across segments such as K-12, test prep etc. We also see a significant improvement in end tutor economics as a result of using Classplus – this results in sector leading monetisation and retention trends. It is therefore our privilege to double down on Classplus with our investment in this round.“

With more than 75 per cent of its educator base coming from tier-2 India and beyond, Classplus has truly built a Bharat-first technology stack in Indian edtech. It has seen more than 100,000 educators and content creators from 3000+ towns and cities of India already using the platform. A majority of its educators have witnessed a 2-3X increase in profitability within six months of adopting the platform.

“We’ve come a long way to become the category leaders since we started back in 2018. But one thing that hasn’t changed in the last 4 years is our commitment towards changing the lives of millions of educators and their student base through technology,” said Mukul Rustagi, CEO and co-founder, Classplus. “We’ll be deploying the freshly infused funds to take our product up by notches and expand our presence globally. Going forward, we’ll also be investing in new acquisitions and partnerships that will enable us to continue delivering best-in-class experience to the educators and helping them create an impact in the education system by building bigger and stronger businesses.”

Very recently, Classplus announced expansion in Southeast Asian markets including Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. Classplus recently appointed Manish Chawla, previously VP of Engineering at Zomato, as the CTO and Sankalp Aggarwal, previously head of finance at Gaana, as the CFO in January.