South Asia’s largest overseas education company Leap has raised $75 million (INR 585 Cr) in Series D funding led by Owl Ventures.
The round saw participation from new investors Steadview Capital and Paramark Ventures along with existing investors Jungle Ventures and Sequoia Capital India. The startup has now raised over $150 million in equity since it was founded in 2019.
Leap, which runs LeapScholar, LeapFinance, and Yocket, is a full-stack international student mobility platform. The company runs the world’s largest online community of study abroad aspirants with over two million students. Centred around the community, Leap offers a suite of products to cover an international student’s lifecycle. These include international test prep like IELTS, TOEFL, SAT, etc., admissions and visa counselling as well as financial offerings like international student loans, international bank accounts, credit cards, and money remittance services.
This holistic end-to-end approach to solving every pain point 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”
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.”
In recent months, Leap has undertaken several new growth initiatives. In April, the company announced a partnership with Colorado State University, USA bringing the university’s prestigious MCIS program to Indian students in a unique multi-geography hybrid format, at a much lower cost. More such innovative offerings are in the pipeline across Leap’s 750+ global university partners. Earlier this year, the company expanded its presence into the Middle East, to help students in the region in their study abroad pursuits.
Commenting on the company’s plans, Arnav Kumar, Co-founder of Leap shared, “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.”
Ravi Mehta, Founder and CIO, Steadview Capital said, “Steadview Capital is excited to partner with Leap in its journey of building the largest full-stack platform, focused on Indian students looking to pursue international education. We believe Leap is well-positioned to take this platform globally and help students from all over the world to achieve their dreams.”
Yash Sankrityayan, Managing Partner, Jungle Ventures said, “Jungle Ventures is proud to triple down on Leap with our third investment in two years since leading their Series B, as they have rapidly grown and become the leading all-in-one platform for emerging Asian students looking to study overseas. We believe overseas education is a large global market and a long-term trend and are committed to supporting the Leap founders and team to become the largest global study abroad platform.”
