Bhanzu’s Series A capital round was headed by global investment company Eight Roads Ventures, with B Capital also participating. The firm intends to use the new cash to expand its business worldwide across several locations, improve its technology infrastructure, and hire more people.
Bhanzu, a math-focused edtech platform, has secured Rs 119.8 crore in funding led by Eight Roads Ventures. Along with previous investor Lightspeed, B Capital participated in the Series A financing.
This would be the Hyderabad-based company’s second financing round in the last seven months.
Bhanzu’s board of directors approved a special resolution to issue 1 equity share and 25,634 Series A compulsory convertible preference shares (CCPS) at an issue price of Rs 46,717 apiece in order to raise Rs 119.8 crore ($15 million).
Eight Roads Ventures led the round with Rs 87.82 crore ($11 million). B Capital and current investor Lightspeed each contributed $2 million.
Bhanzu also increased its ESOP pool by 3,042 options, bringing it to 20,952 options. According to Fintrackr, the new options are valued Rs 14.2 crore, while the overall value of the company’s ESOP pool is Rs 98 crore.
Bhanzu delivers immersive math learning classes which promotes cognitive capacities among youngsters aged from 5 to 16 years. It has trained over 30,000 students through its course offerings, according to its website.
The founder of Bhanzu, Neelakanta Bhanu Prakash, owns four world records and 50 Limca records for being the quickest human calculator in the world.
The firm is worth roughly Rs 836 crore ($105 million) (post allotment). Importantly, Bhanzu’s valuation increased by more than tenfold after being valued at roughly $10 million in its initial stage.
Following this financing, its creator Prakash owns 38.62% of the company, followed by Lightspeed and Eight Roads, who own 18.59% and 10.5%, respectively.
J. Srinivas owns 3.75% of the company, as do Alluru Uday Kiran, Devulapalli Lakshmi Prachotan, and J Sai Srinivas Krishnakanth.
Bhanzu has so far received $17 million, including a $2 million seed round from Lightspeed and a slew of angel investors like Nitin Gupta, Gaurav Munjal, Kunal Shah, Maninder Gulati, and Biswa Kalyan Rath.
While Bhanzu has yet to provide its fiscal year ending March 2021 data, it was a pre-revenue stage firm in the fiscal year ending March 2021. According to its yearly financial statement filed with the RoC, the firm earned Rs 5.5 lakh in operational income and Rs 1.1 lakh in profit.