Study abroad startup Leap Scholar, valued at nearly $1 billion, earns $5.4 million in FY22

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Sequoia Capital-backed study abroad platform Leap Scholar, which had last raised funds in June 2022 at a valuation of close to a billion dollars, ended the previous financial year with an operating revenue of about $5.4 million (Rs 40.2 crore), further highlighting high revenue multiples of Indian edtech startups.

Outleap Technologies Pvt, which runs Leap Scholar, a platform that offers test preparation products for exams like IELTS, TOEFL, and SAT, reported a total revenue of Rs 40.4 crore for FY22 (2021-22), a near 3.5-times jump over FY21 (2020-21), the company’s filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) showed.

However, its expenses grew more than seven times to Rs 121 crore during the year, which led to the firm reporting a widening loss of Rs 80.3 crore for FY22, the filings showed.

During FY22, Leap Scholar spent nearly Rs 60 crore on employees, up from about Rs 10 crore in FY21. The company’s other expenses, which include advertising, marketing and promotional costs, grew nearly 10-fold to Rs 60.7 crore. For FY22, Leap Scholar had a negative operating cash flow of Rs 83 crore.

Leap Scholar was founded in 2019 by Vaibhav Singh and Arnav Kumar and counts Jungle Ventures, Owl Ventures, besides Sequoia Capital as its backers. The company has raised more than $150 million to date across four funding rounds. It raised $75 million in its Series D round in June 2022. While the company did not disclose its valuation, a Bloomberg report said that Leap Scholar’s valuation was near $1 billion, quoting Singh.

Leap Scholar is based in San Francisco with an office in Bengaluru. Post its last fundraise, the company said that it will be growing partnerships with educational institutions abroad and expanding geographies.

In April last year, the company announced a partnership with Colorado State University, USA, bringing the university’s Master in Computer Information System (MCIS) programme to Indian students at a lower cost and plans to bring more such offerings across its global university partners with the funds raised. Leap Scholar also helps with visa counselling and financial aid like international student loans.

Leap Scholar also claimed in June last year that it has an online community of study-abroad aspirants with over two million students. The three-year-old startup claimed to have enabled services for over 175,000 students in the past 12 months. Singh had told Moneycontrol then that 2022 will set a new all-time high in terms of study abroad market trends.

Leap Scholar’s FY22 revenue puts a spotlight on high revenue multiples of Indian edtech companies. Moneycontrol reported how revenue multiples of Indian edtech companies were the highest in the world. Bigger edtech firms like Byju’s, Unacademy, and also early-stage edtechs, have LTM revenue multiples (last twelve month) between 12-20, while global edtech companies like Coursera and 2U Inc, have revenue multiples below 10.