ETS leads latest funding round in global study abroad company Leverage Edu

Equity portion of the round is estimated at $25-27 million, with overall fundraise including debt touching $40 million, they said.

The funding round is likely to value the startup at roughly $150 million post-money, they said.

This is a 25% bump in its previous valuation back in March 2022, when Leverage Edu raised $22 million from a consortium of funds, family offices and individual angels.

The latest round will see participation from existing investors, people cited above said.

The company is backed by the likes of Blume Ventures, DSG Consumer Partners and Tomorrow Capital.

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Leverage Edu and ETS did not respond to ET’s queries on the matter until press time on Sunday.The fundraise comes at a time when Indian startups have been struggling to raise funds and edtech companies have been facing pressures of waning pandemic growth. Several edtech majors including Byju’s, Unacademy and Vedantu have also laid off employees over the past year in a bid to increase runway.

Leverage Edu, which helps students from India, Nigeria and Nepal and other markets to apply to universities abroad, will utilise most of the fresh funds to ramp up its focus towards the US higher education market, people cited above said.

“ETS is a strategic investment… The company has discussed with investors that it wants to ramp up its focus on the US market,” one of them said.

“It seems to be a part of a larger strategy to de-risk itself by being overly dependent on one particular geography for business,” the person added.

Over 75% of admissions Leverage Edu facilitates at present is for UK colleges, with the rest coming from Australia and Canada, the sources said.

ETS develops standardised tests, primarily in the United States, and also administers international tests, including the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and Graduate Record Examination (GRE).

In August 2022, ETS Global had led a $210-million funding in upGrad, which valued the startup at roughly $2.25 billion. Through its private equity arm, ETS Strategic Capital, it has also invested in education services platform CollegeDekho.

Founded in 2017, New-Delhi-based Leverage Edu is estimated to have clocked over Rs 100 crore of revenue in FY23, people cited earlier said.

On an average, it reportedly helps over 12,000 students annually with foreign admissions.

It competes with edtech startup Leap Scholar, which also caters to students preparing for exams including International English Language Testing System (IELTS), TOEFL, Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), etc.

Leverage Edu has also entered other business lines such as foreign accommodation for students, international remittance for fees, and loans for higher education.

It launched financial services business Fly Finance for international remittance in October last year, and has also received a FFMC (full-fledged money changer) licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Through Fly Finance, Leverage Edu is also looking to ramp up its facilitated loans, which reportedly stood at Rs 280 crore in October last year. It was aiming to cross the Rs 1,000 crore mark in terms of loan disbursements in 2023.

It has also signed up with partners in the UK to offer student accommodation to outgoing students.