Edtech start-up Cuemath is in talks to raise about $100 million in the next two months. The funds will be used to invest in product development and geographical expansion, according to Cuemath founder and CEO Manan Khurma.

Cuemath has a presence in over 20 countries and wants to expand to over 50 countries by the end of this year. “We have seen a huge demand for online math learning during the pandemic and 70 per cent of the company’s revenues have come from outside India. The US is a very strong upcoming market for us; South-East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and UAE are also important markets,” Khurma added.

Till date, Cuemath has raised a total of $64.5 million in funding over five rounds from investors like Sequoia Capital, Alphabet, Lightstone Aspada and Alphabet Inc's independent growth fund CapitalG, among others. The company’s latest Series C round was raised at a valuation of $200 million in December and the company expects to touch $1 billion (Unicorn) valuation by next year. The company currently has over 10,000 tutors and more than 2 lakh students on the platform.

While Khurma did not comment on the company’s new valuation, he said, “Cuemath is not competing with the edtech players in India and has rather set its eyes on the global market.”

Cuemath currently offers maths and coding classes to the students in K12 segment, which puts it in direct competition with edtech players like Vedantu and BYJU’S.

Focus on maths, coding

The major differentiation being that while the competitors have been offering online courses in all school subjects, Cuemath has remained focused on maths related courses. In future as well, Cuemath plans to continue focusing on maths and coding (which the company sees as an extension of maths). The company is, however, open to exploring coding courses for learners beyond the K12 segment.

“We want to win the global math space, coding, data science, logical thinking (age groups might go up). Post K-12 Math and skill development is interesting and in future we can expand to these arenas. But we are sure we won’t be going beyond math space (no other subjects),” said Khurma.

The company has recently opened up its content for free, with the vision to reach 1 billion students across the world. Khurma believes content should not be monetised and learning resources should be accessible to as many students as possible.

“With schools shut due to the lockdown, student progress has fallen sharply during the pandemic. This cumulative loss of learning in children will invariably have a critical impact on their future. Parents’ concerns are valid in such scenarios, and their increased confidence in EdTech platforms for Math learning is very encouraging. School syllabus will need to be supplemented by smart teaching methods offered by edtech platforms going forward,” he added.

Cuemath has recently commissioned a study on market research firm Nielsen to highlight students’ challenges while learning through the pandemic. The study concluded that 87 per cent of parents feel that edtech platforms will be as important to their children as they are today, even after schools reopen in post-covid times. The study was done on 1,200 parents across various Indian metros and school grades. The surveyed cities include Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, and Hyderabad.

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