Online Learning Startup Coursera Raises $64M in Series D Round at $800M Valuation

Today, online learning startup Coursera announced that it has closed $64 million in a Series D funding round, taking the company's total capital raised to date to $210.3 million. Coursera will use the latest round to fund efforts in its fast-growing enterprise business (Coursera for Business), to expand its master’s degree portfolio, and to accelerate product innovations that take advantage of the platform’s unmatched scale with over 26 million registered learners globally.

In strong support for the company’s direction, the majority of the funding for this round came from existing investors—GSV Asset Management, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB) and Learn Capital. The Lampert Foundation also participated as a new investor.

“As the industry leader in online higher education, we have a massive opportunity ahead of us in preparing people, companies, and governments to respond to the changing nature of jobs and to take on the urgent challenges of workforce transformation,” said Rick Levin, Coursera’s CEO. “This round of funding enables us to continue innovating across our platform to deliver better learner outcomes, and to accelerate the momentum we have in our new initiatives — enterprise and degrees.”

Coursera recently launched Coursera for Business—a platform to help companies manage workforce transformation at scale. Within a short span, it has been embraced by more than 50 companies around the world, including BCG, BNY Mellon, L’Oreal, Paypal, and Air France KLM.

In January of this year, Coursera also launched Coursera for Governments & Nonprofits, joining forces with government and local institutions to prepare their communities for the jobs of the future. These partnerships have quickly scaled to cover efforts in a number of countries, such as the US, Pakistan, Egypt, Malaysia, and Singapore.

In addition to over 2,000 courses and 180 Specializations, Coursera has begun offering fully-accredited online master’s degrees in order to serve the full spectrum of educational needs. Encouraged by the success of the first two degrees it launched in 2015, it recently announced two more degrees—a Master’s in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OMIE) from HEC Paris, and a Master’s of Accounting (iMSA) from the University of Illinois.

“We are excited to see Coursera emerge as the world’s learning platform, with a highly engaged global learner base and educational content from leading universities and top companies,” said Michael Moe, Founder and CEO of GSV Asset Management. “In a global marketplace and knowledge-based economy, education makes the difference not only for how well an individual does, but for companies, and for that matter, countries."

Within five years of its founding, Coursera has emerged as the world’s largest online platform for higher education with more than 26 million learners, 150 university partners, and 2000+ courses. With the deepest catalog of courses, innovations like micro-credentials that learners can stack into degrees, and machine learning-powered skills and content matching systems, Coursera is well positioned to equip more people around the world with the skills they need to close gaps in high-demand fields like data science, computer science, and business.

Matrix Backed Dailyhunt Raises $25M in Series D Funding Led by ByteDance

Dailyhunt – India’s leading local language app has raised $25 million in its Series D funding round led by ByteDance. ByteDance is a global digital content platform with over 138 million monthly active users of its news app Toutiao in China. Arun Sarin, former CEO of Vodafone & existing investors of Dailyhunt - Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital India, Omidyar and Falcon Edge also participated in the round.

Dailyhunt is India’s most popular local language app with over 28 million monthly active users and over 4.5 billion page views monthly. Through its platform, it provides the widest collection of regional language content in form of news, eBooks, magazines, comics and videos.

Zhang Yiming, Founder and CEO of ByteDance, said, “Dailyhunt is serving a huge unmet need of providing local language content to Indian mobile users and has grown with its localized approach ad business model. We are excited about a long-term partnership here and believe in Dailyhunt’s long term potential to be the leading mobile content platform in India”.

Virendra Gupta, Founder and CEO of Dailyhunt, said, “Dailyhunt has grown by partnering with publishers, developers, OEMs, advertisers and other ecosystem partners. We want to thank our partners for their support and reaffirm our commitment to the local language digital ecosystem. The investment by ByteDance, who has done this at scale, reinforces our belief in the opportunity. We look forward to learn from ByteDance on personalization and large scale machine learning to continue to offer a unique experience to our users”.

“Dailyhunt is addressing the next 400M users who will be brought online by the coming explosion in data usage. We believe in their approach of working with every ecosystem player to bring the best content to the user. We are privileged to partner with Viru and the team at Dailyhunt and welcome ByteDance to the board and look forward to partnering with them to build a local language platform” said Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix India.

Image: Virendra Gupta, Founder and CEO of Dailyhunt

Swiggy Raises Series D Funding of $15M from Bessemer Venture Partners

Swiggy, Indian food ordering and delivery platform, has raised $15 million in a Series D funding from Bessemer Venture Partners. Existing investors also participated in this round. This is close on the heels of the Series C funding of $35 million raised in January 2016, from existing and new investors, including New York-based investors Harmony Partners and Singapore-based RB. This investment takes the total funds raised by India’s largest food ordering platform to $75.5 million. The freshly raised funds will fuel Swiggy’s next growth phase, with an improved customer experience at its core. This will include technology upgrades, a wider spread of restaurants to choose from and better delivery efficiency.

To spearhead the next phase of growth, Swiggy has recently ramped up its senior leadership by hiring vice presidents across the following functions - marketing, product, HR, design and Finance. These leaders have in the past nurtured high-growth companies and have driven organisation-wide efficiencies. Their expertise will be instrumental in shaping the strategy and maintaining Swiggy’s leadership position in a fast growing category.

Innovation is core to Swiggy and it is undertaking new initiatives as it constantly strives to address the growing needs of different consumer segments. In the months to follow, Swiggy will continue to focus on consolidation and capturing a larger share of the market under the guidance of the new VPs.

Since its inception in 2015, Swiggy has rapidly grown to become the leader in the Indian food delivery sector by consistently reducing delivery times and improving customer experience. The fastest food delivery service in the country, Swiggy’s average delivery time is an industry benchmark of 37 minutes.

“We are excited to partner with Swiggy. Swiggy's full stack approach coupled with great execution has resulted in unparalleled customer experience, retention and business economics. We look forward to working with Sriharsha and the management team as they further cement Swiggy's leadership position in the India market.” quotes Vishal Gupta, Managing Director at Bessemer Venture Partners.

Speaking on the Series D fund raise, Sriharsha Majety, Co-founder and CEO, Swiggy, said, “We are excited about the funding as this is a validation of our performance and recognition of our leadership, in addition to being testament to the tremendous potential of the food tech sector. Our strong growth in the last few months shows that our customers are increasingly becoming accustomed to a new behaviour of ordering food for the experience, rather than only for convenience. Our vision is to change the way India eats and we want to be the top of mind recall for the users for all their four meals a day.”

Swiggy is Indian food-tech company having raised $ 75.5 Million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, SAIF Partners and Accel Partners in 4 rounds of funding. The inception of this Bangalore based company was inspired by the thought of providing a complete food ordering and delivery solution to customers and the product is wholly dedicated to this cause. The idea was to get the most preferred food from the best restaurants in a neighbourhood delivered to customers, at their doorstep. Swiggy processes the orders on its platform via its own delivery fleet which is responsible for picking up and delivering food to its customers. Having its own delivery fleet enables them to offer their customers a variety of convenient features like faster deliveries, no minimum order and live tracking of their delivery. Currently present in 8 cities across the country and has over 9000 restaurant partners live on its platform.

Hike Messenger Raises a Series D Financing of Over $175M Led by Tencent and Foxconn

Hike Messenger, India’s only homegrown messaging platform and the largest Indian internet company by users, announced that it has raised a Series D financing of over $175 million in a new funding round led by Tencent Holdings Limited and Foxconn Technology Group valuing the company close to $1.4 billion. Existing investors Tiger, Bharti and the SoftBank Group also participated in this round. This is the fourth venture capital round and the biggest to date for Hike, taking the total investment to over $250 million so far.

Talking about Tencent’s investment in Hike, Tencent President Martin Lau said, “Hike deeply understands India; a highly diverse market with many nuances. It is on a mission synergistic to ours, which is to enhance the quality of human life through internet services. With our investment, Hike will be able to leverage our deep domain expertise in the messaging platform space to provide more value to its users in India.”

Talking about Foxconn’s investment in Hike, FIH Mobile CEO, Calvin Chih, said, “Messaging platforms are where consumers and their social networks reside and represent significant investment potential, particularly in a market like India, where most people will access the internet for the first time on their mobile phones. As a leading provider of mobiles technology and Internet of Things solutions, FIH Mobile understands the value that mobile platforms, such as Hike Messenger, bring to our business portfolio and our strategy for delivering cutting-edge products and solutions that meet the needs of our customers and consumers, enabling us to achieve sustainable business growth. Hike with its hyperlocal strategy is clearly the company of choice for us to co-invest with our partners, SoftBank and Tencent.”

Hike also has a roster of some of the most prominent people in the technology space as angel investors such as Adam D’Angelo, Founder and CEO, Quora; Aditya Agarwal, Vice President Engineering, Dropbox; Ruchi Sanghvi, erstwhile Vice President, Operations, Dropbox and Matt Mullenweg, Founder and CEO of Automattic Inc. and Co-Founder, WordPress.

In January 2016, Hike had announced that it has a user base of a 100 million users. 95% of Hike users are based in India and 90% of them are young and below the age of 30. Hike users, on an average, exchange 40 Billion messages per month and spend 120 min. per user per week on the platform. Hike has been built for these young consumers around 3 key pillars:

1. Local Expressive Content that includes Hike’s very popular 10,000+ stickers available in 40 languages, themes and multi-lingual user interface. The availability of the Platform adds to this piece as it makes relevant local content available for customers to enjoy and share with their network of friends. The Platform includes News in English and Hindi, Games (Beta) on Hike, Live Cricket, Coupons, Just for Laughs and Hike Daily.

1. Emphasis on Privacy that includes the innovative feature Hidden Mode that hides chats quickly and elegantly and Favorites so customers can choose who sees last seen, display pictures and status updates.

1. Data Constraints. Features such as Hike2SMS and Hike Direct are built for India. Hike2SMS helps send free SMS when there is no internet connectivity and Hike Direct helps share files without the use of internet.

Hike is simplifying how people connect and interact with content and services on mobile. Hike believes that messaging will do for mobile what the browser did for the desktop times a 100.

BlueStone.com Raises Rs 200 Cr in Series D Round from IIFL, Accel and Others

BlueStone.com, India’s leading online destination for fine jewellery, has raised a fresh round of funding led by IIFL and Accel along with Kalaari Capital, RB Investments and IvyCap Ventures. The ₹200 crore fund will enable the company to grow the category and strengthen its leadership position.

Globally, the online jewellery segment is witnessing exponential growth and is expected to capture 10% of total jewellery sales by 2020. The Indian precious jewellery market which is currently valued at $60 billion is projected to cross the $1 10 billion mark in the next five years with online contribution estimated to be in the $2 – 3 billion range.

Currently, the online jewellery segment in India contributes less than 0.5% but is growing at 5X YoY as compared to traditional jewellery players. BlueStone.com has planned major investments in expanding design and manufacturing capacity as well as marketing initiatives to grow the online jewellery segment.

According to Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder and CEO, BlueStone.com, “BlueStone.com pioneered the category of online fine jewellery in 2011 and in a short span of five years has captured majority market share. We are now targeting a four-fold increase in revenues to touch Rs 1000 crore by 2018 and we want to achieve this goal in a profitable and sustainable manner. The new round of investments underscores the success of the company’s vertically integrated full stack online first business model and the enormous untapped potential in the jewellery category.”

Prashanth Prakash, Partner, Accel Partners said, “BlueStone.com has posted strong, sustained growth and set several benchmarks in the online jewellery retail industry in India like leveraging technologies such as 3D Visual Merchanding to omni-channel initiative of Home Try-On. We are committed to extend our association with BlueStone.com as we see immense potential in the brand.”

Speaking on the latest fund raise, Vani Kola, Managing Director, Kalaari Capital said, “BlueStone.com has a high quality team and has grown rapidly over the last year. With the strong foundation and this capital infusion, we believe BlueStone.com is well positioned to build a large online jewellery brand in India.”

BlueStone.com offers over 5,000 unique jewellery designs and plans to scale to 30,000 designs in the next three years. With design, manufacturing and logistics capabilities built in-house, the brand is able to quickly expand its manufacturing capabilities and customize its design offerings as per market trends.

Headquartered in Bangalore, BlueStone.com had earlier raised funds from Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, IvyCap Ventures and Saama Capital. Mr Ratan Tata and Ms Meena Ganesh (CEO of Portea) have also invested in the company. With the latest fund raise, the total funding received by BlueStone.com is $60 million.

Image - Gaurav Kushwaha, CEO and Co-founder, BlueStone

IFC Leads Rs. 400 Cr Investment in Lenskart

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is investing Rs. 171 Crores in Indian eyewear company Lenskart, to help the company expand access to high-quality and affordable eye-care products in tier-3, tier-4 cities. IFC was the lead investor for the Rs. 400 crore Series D investment round which also saw participation from TPG Growth, Adveq Management and IDG Ventures. In addition, Ratan Tata and Kris Gopalakrishnan (co-founder of Infosys) invested in their personal capacity as part of this round. Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to this transaction.

Lenskart is into assembly, manufacturing, wholesale distribution and supply of high quality eyewear products, such as eyeglasses, power sunglasses and contact lenses. Company plans to utilize the funds for strengthening its technology, supply chain, lens manufacturing, and expanding reach of its high-quality eyewear products across 400 cities.

“This investment will support a rapidly growing market leader in the Internet sector, while meeting a significant gap in the Indian eye care market,” said Pravan Malhotra, IFC’s co-lead for Global Internet Investments and lead for VC investments in South and Southeast Asia. As part of this investment, he will join Lenskart’s Board of Directors.

Lenskart has adopted a unique omni-channel approach thereby making eyewear truly accessible by making it available on desktop, mobile, hypermarkets, high streets, malls, hospitals and now even at home. The company conducts over 1,500 eye exams daily through its home eye exam service which it intends to make available for every home in urban and rural India.

Lenskart has been relentless about its focus on customer centricity. The company has built a strong leadership team, all of who work with the single mission of ‘creating enthusiastically satisfied customers all the time’. It has roped in professional stalwarts from retail, marketing and digital industries to head the respective divisions. The company will continue hiring great talent, particularly in technology.

Image Source: ShutterStock