San Francisco & Bengaluru-based edtech startup Leap has secured $75 Mn (INR 585 Cr) in Series D funding led by Owl Ventures. New investors including Steadview Capital and Paramark Ventures along with existing investors Jungle Ventures and Sequoia Capital India too participated in the funding round.
According to the startup, the total fund raised now reached over $150 Mn in equity since it was founded in 2019.
Leap runs LeapScholar, LeapFinance, and Yocket, is a full-stack international student mobility platform. The startup claims to run the world’s largest online community of study abroad aspirants with over two million students.
Further, the edtech offers a suite of products to cover an international student’s life cycle. These include international test prep like IELTS, TOEFL, SAT, etc. It also offers admissions and visa counselling as well as financial offerings including international student loans, international bank accounts, credit cards, and money remittance services.
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The edtech said in its pursuit of covering the end-to-end lifecycle needs of an international student has enabled Leap to help over 175,000 students in their study abroad journey in the past 12 months.
Vaibhav Singh, Co-founder of Leap shared, “Students love our truly unique one-stop approach to meeting their international education needs. This combined with the overall strong rebound in international student outflows post-covid has led to exponential growth for us. Over the next couple of years, more than five million students are expected to cross an international border to fulfil their global dreams. With the backing of marquee global investors, we continue to march forward on our mission to democratize access to quality global education and make these dreams a reality.”
In recent months, Leap has undertaken several new growth initiatives. In April, it announced a partnership with Colorado State University, USA bringing the university’s prestigious MCIS program to Indian students in a multi-geography hybrid format.
The edtech further plans to bring more such offerings in the coming future across its 750+ global university partners. Earlier this year, the startup expanded its presence into the Middle East, to help students in the region in their study abroad pursuits.
Amit Patel, Managing Director, Owl Ventures said, “Owl is thrilled to be working with Leap to create a transformative company that will impact generations of students around the world in their pursuit to access and afford high-quality international education opportunities. By simplifying an otherwise overwhelming process and helping students navigate all the steps of counselling, test-prep, and financing, Leap is well-positioned to support the increasing demand to go and study abroad as more countries and companies around the world are becoming further integrated into the global economy.”
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Sharing on the future plans, Leap’s Co-founder, Arnav Kumar said the edtech company has built a strong framework to offer students the help they need to pursue their education from international establishments. Having built such a strong foundation, the startup is now all set leapfrog to the next level of offering global education.
“Having built the underlying infrastructure for global student mobility, we are now able to scale rapidly across multiple dimensions. We have launched many industry-first products and experiences to make the student journey seamless. Ensuring student success has been our mission and we will continue to deepen our existing offerings and launch newer ones in the months ahead,” Arnav Kumar said.
