EMERITUS Completes $40 million Series C Funding

Sequoia India leads the funding round, with participation from existing investor Bertelsmann India Investments.

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Jan 10, 2019, 04:30 ET

BOSTON, Jan. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- EMERITUS, an edtech company that partners with U.S. and European universities to provide online courses to working professionals globally, announced the successful completion of its Series C funding totaling $40 million. The latest round was led by Sequoia India, and existing EMERITUS investor Bertelsmann India Investments also participated.

"EMERITUS provides a 360-degree solution to our partner universities to help them take their courses online and to reach global audiences. Seventy percent of our students are based outside of the United States, and this fundraise will help accelerate our mission of making high-quality professional education more accessible and affordable," said Ashwin Damera, co-founder and Director at EMERITUS. "We will use the proceeds of this latest fundraise to create a more immersive and adaptive learning platform, to expand our multilingual capabilities, and to ensure that our omni-channel offerings are readily available to our students on-the-go."

Having increased its student enrollment by more than 10 times over the past two years, EMERITUS, along with its Singapore-based parent company, Eruditus, is a leader in the $280 billion global professional education market. In the current fiscal year, EMERITUS will enroll 30,000 students from across more than 80 countries in courses delivered in collaboration with university partners such as MIT, Columbia, Tuck at Dartmouth, Wharton, UC Berkeley, Kellogg, London Business School and IESE. EMERITUS expects to increase its enrollment by more than 10 times yet again over the next five years across certificate courses and online degrees. The latest funding round will allow EMERITUS to increase its course offerings in high-demand subject areas such as data science, machine learning, blockchain and cybersecurity and to expand its language offerings to include Portuguese and Mandarin in addition to English and Spanish.

"Upskilling and reskilling represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the global education market. Driven both by individual learners investing in their own professional development and by corporations investing in the development of their employees, the massive challenge of reskilling in response to technology evolution is throwing open a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for education entrepreneurs," said GV Ravishankar, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors. "Sequoia India has been an active investor in the education space over the last several years, and is excited to partner with ERUDITUS, a startup that is using technology to bring cutting-edge, industry-ratified education programs to consumers at scale."

Using the SPOC (small, private, online course) model, EMERITUS courses combine lectures from university faculty and experiential learning through simulations, role-plays and group projects. EMERITUS' course pedagogy and dedicated student support ensure a high course completion rate of 85 percent and a net promoter score of more than 50.

"By integrating technology and local pedagogic insights with global Ivy League education to make world class learning solutions more accessible to a larger audience, ERUDITUS has taken a leading position in the global edtech market. We have strong conviction in the founding team's vision and global outreach to students, and are confident that it can redefine online education market on a global basis," said Pankaj Makkar, Managing Director of Bertelsmann India Investments.

Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor for the transaction.

For more information, please visit emeritus.org and www.eruditus.com

About EMERITUS (www.emeritus.org)
EMERITUS offers professional education courses in collaboration with top-ranked universities: MIT, Columbia, Tuck at Dartmouth, Wharton, UC Berkeley and London Business School. Using technology and curriculum innovation, EMERITUS provides working professionals who are unable to enroll in full-time courses with affordable online access to top-tier education in the skills they will need to become the business leaders of tomorrow. EMERITUS' global team includes 350 employees located in Boston, Dubai, Mexico City, Mumbai, New Delhi and Singapore.

About Eruditus Executive Education (www.eruditus.com)
Eruditus Executive Education delivers high-quality blended programs globally in collaboration with reputed academic institutions which include INSEAD, Harvard Business School, Wharton, MIT, Cambridge, Berkeley Haas and Columbia Business School. These programs are typically 6-8 months in duration and use a mix of on-campus, off-campus and online delivery. The company was founded by Ashwin Damera and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu in 2010.

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SOURCE EMERITUS