More rounds of smaller amounts and in early-stage companies
2012 was a key year for the ICT sector in education, Venture capital invested more than $1B in this sector. In 2013, although the number of rounds continued to increase, the amount of these rounds has decreased considerably, which explains why the funding The amount of financing was reduced by 26% in the first half of the year. The majority of this financing went to early stage companies.
Major operations in the sector
Despite the downturn, there have been major rounds exceeding $100M such as those achieved by Laureate Education and Lynda.com. Laureate education provides online courses on a wide range of topics. Lynda.com, raised a $103M round of funding from Accel partners , specturam Equity and Meritech Capital Partners.
Lynda.com has acquired the Austrian company Video 2 Brain ,one month after this first round of financing, Lynda.com enters the video language training business and diversifies its activity, says Diego Gutierrez, the group's corporate finance expert. Abra-Invest.
In addition Coursera has also achieved $60M in a round led by GSV Capital , New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins Caufield. Coursera is a platform that offers free online courses in collaboration with the world's top universities.
Top 10 largest operations
The table below shows the largest operations in the ICT education sector. Interestingly, there are investors who have participated in more than one of these deals. roundsas Insight Venture Capital that has invested in Open English and Pluralsight and Accel Partners in WyzAnt, Knewton,
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