Edtech Scaler Academy raises $55 million led by Lightrock, valued at $710 million

About 7 out of every 10 startup unicorns in India now has a Scaler Academy alumni.

Bengaluru-based edtech Scaler Academy said on February 1 that it has raised $55 million from a clutch of investors led by Lightrock. The company was valued at $700 million. Existing investors Sequoia India and Tiger Global Management invested too.

Launched in 2019, Scaler Academy is an edtech startup focused on upskilling college students and tech professionals. A press release from Scaler claimed that about seven out of every 10 unicorns in India now has a Scaler Academy alumni. In addition, Scaler Academy has partnered for placements with big names in the industry like Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

“The cumulative annual salary of Scaler Academy graduates is more than Rs 600 crore as of today. If you factor in our expenses on teaching and infra, Scaler Academy enables the addition of more than $100 million into India's economy every year. Our next goal will be enabling the addition of a billion USD to India's GDP annually,” Scaler Academy and InterviewBit Co-Founder Abhimanyu Saxena said.

With the current round of funding, the startup aims to pursue its international expansion plans, launch new product offerings and business verticals, make strategic acquisitions, and grow its customer base in India and globally.

“Primarily, we will be using the funds for acquisitions, for few of which we are already in conversation. In the year 2023, we are looking at two-three strategic acquisitions,” Saxena said.

Mentioning that the issue of shortage of tech talent is across borders, he added: “The product we offer is global. The funds we have raised, hence, are also for certain strategic advancements we want to make, in time, to become a global company. We will be starting US operations very soon.”

Saxena believes that technologies like machine learning and data science will create a new kind of India powered by communication technologies like 5G that will have a far-reaching impact on the country's socio-economic status.

“Today, we have an acutely inequitable higher education ecosystem where the top 15 percent of colleges drive millions to attempt an array of entrance examinations, whilst the bottom 85 percent have limited accountability. On top of that, the top 15 percent cater to those who can afford $11,000 or more, further restricting the country's ability to build a robust talent pipeline for the future.”

He  thinks that higher education must shift from learning to skilling, from poor accountability to employability, and from physical communities to digital tribes.

Saxena also said Scaler has grown 8-9 times in the last year and is cash flow positive, but did not elaborate further. “The team at Scaler Academy Academy (& InterviewBit) are building a learning community that is accountable for outcomes and designed for the future of work,”  said Divya Venkatavaraghavan, Principal Investor, Lightrock India.