Info Edge India Ltd, which owns job portal Naukri.com, has invested Rs 37.93 crore ($5.87 million) in a fresh round into Meritnation, its ed-tech portfolio company.
In a regulatory filing, Info Edge said the new round of funding will increase its stake in the company to 65.67%. With the recent transaction, its total exposure in Meritnation stood at Rs 154.6 crore.
The Delhi-based ed-tech company will use Rs 32.19 crore to repay its existing debt, and use the rest to expand operations.
In earlier transactions, Meritnation had raised $18.08 million across six tranches from Info Edge, according to VCCEdge, the data and research platform of News Corp VCCircle. In the last funding round in 2015, Info Edge had pumped in $4 million.
Meritnation, which is operated by Applect Learning Systems Pvt. Ltd, was founded in 2008 by IIM-Bangalore alumni Pavan Chauhan and Ritesh Hemrajani. The company develops and delivers study content and assessment modules for students of classes I through to high school in mathematics, science and English, primarily for CBSE and ICSE boards, besides other. It also offers online and offline test preparation modules for various undergraduate entrance examinations, including engineering and medical.
During 2016-17, the company had clocked 26.43% rise in turnover at Rs 36.30 crore, up from Rs 28.71 crore in the previous fiscal year.
Info Ege operates a slew of internet properties, including real estate portal 99acres.com, matrimonial website Jeevansathi and education services portal Shiksha. Besides, it holds stakes in several technology firms such as food-tech firm Zomato, coupons site Mydala, online insurance policy aggregator PolicyBazaar and e-learning firm Meritnation.
The company has been making follow-on investments in its other portfolios as well. In September, it had increased its stake in Bengaluru-based online photography startup Canvera Digital Technologies Pvt. Ltd through an investment of Rs 8.6 crore.
In July, it had made a follow-on investment of Rs 8 crore in another portfolio firm, Green Leaves Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd, which runs beauty services marketplace BigStylist.
It had also invested Rs 3.5 crore in Surat-based Wishbook Infoservices Pvt. Ltd, which operates sales catalogue aggregation app Wishbook, to pick up a 21.88% stake.
In the second quarter of 2017-18, Info Edge has attained operational break even to report a 7% increase in operational revenue to Rs 225.2 crore. However, its net profit had declined to Rs 78.6 crore in the quarter ended 30 September, from Rs 80 crore in the year-ago period, due to some tax reversal gains in the previous fiscal year.
