Lumos leads €70m series-C round for OpenClassrooms

According to French daily Les Echos, the fundraising amounted to €70m and included new investors Salesforce Ventures, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and GSV Ventures, as well as existing shareholders BPI France and General Atlantic.

Lumos said in a statement that the company, which was founded in 2013, will expand rapidly into new markets in the coming years.

As Unquote recently reported, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to digital opportunities for many companies in the "edtech" segment, resulting in increased dealflow in recent weeks.

Recent deals at the buyout stage in the education sector include Bowmark's split sale of Oxford International, Magnum Capital's acquisition of Spain-based postgraduate business school operator ISDE, and Stirling Square's planned acquisition of Medisup Sciences, a provider of preparatory courses for admission tests to French medical university, in a deal that valued the business at around €350m (14x EBITDA).

Previous funding
In March 2012, OpenClassrooms raised €1.2m in a seed round led by Alven Capital, which followed on with another €1m investment in February 2014. The investor also took part in the firm's €6m series-A round in September 2016 alongside Citizen Capital and BPI France.

In May 2018, General Atlantic led a $60m series-B funding round for the company, with existing investors Alven, Citizen and BPI France also taking part.

Company
Founded in 2013 and based in Paris, OpenClassrooms is an online higher education platform offering 600 courses and 90 certified online degree programmes.

It operates in 140 countries and has around two million unique monthly users. The company has more than 300 staff. 

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