The B2B edtech start-up Classplus has acquired a minority stake in Textbook via a secondary transaction, after buying out shares of the company’s existing investors, Matrix and Pivot Ventures. Following this transaction, Matrix, which earlier had a 34 per cent stake in Textbook, will now have 1.65 per cent stake in the company. This is the maiden acquisition of Classplus. 

As per the filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Textbook’s board passed a special resolution to allot  Series E preference shares to Matrix Partners and Pivot Ventures at an issue price of Rs 4,00,013 per share aggregating up to Rs 67.80 crore against 7,867 shares of Testbook held by them. 

As per a report by Entrackr, the strategic investment is made in order to expand Classplus’ portfolio by acquiring more stakes in Textbook in the future and taking the company under its folds in the future. Eight-year-old start-up, Textbook, provides services for government examination preparation in small cities. In contrast to this, Classplus provide services to educators and content creators to build their presence online by offering courses, and digitize on the tutions offered offline.

According to reports, Textbook has raised capital worth $13 million and have been looking out to raise funds to expand its operations. The company registered 85 per cent increase in revenue from operations to Rs 22.3 crore in FY21 from Rs 12 crore in FY20, whereas the company registered a two-fold loss 

The development comes at a time when the domestic start-up ecosystem especially the edtech sector is witnessing mass layoffs and pay cuts amidst a funding crunch. As per reports more than 1,500 employees have been laid off in the edtech sector amidst the funding winter.