<article>Online publishing and digital education company <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.mindvalley.com/" target="_blank">Mindvalley</a> is looking to raise an unspecified round of funding for growth, as the Malaysia-based company targets an initial public offering (IPO) within the next four years.
Mindvalley founder and chief executive Vishen Lakhiani’s vision is for Mindvalley to become the largest technology company IPO from Malaysia. And he believes it is achievable.</article>

Online publishing and digital education company <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.mindvalley.com/" target="_blank">Mindvalley</a> is looking to raise an unspecified round of funding for growth, as the Malaysia-based company targets an initial public offering (IPO) within the next four years.
Mindvalley founder and chief executive Vishen Lakhiani’s vision is for Mindvalley to become the largest technology company IPO from Malaysia. And he believes it is achievable.
To get there, Lakhiani’s near term goal is to secure funding to accelerate Mindvalley’s business using the technology it has built for its education platform.
“Investment is necessary now,” he said of the dry powder needed to fuel Mindvalley’s next chapter of growth.
Lakhiani did not reveal how much the company was looking to raise when asked, emphasising on the hunt for suitable investment partners instead.
“We are open to the right partnership; the exact amount is less important than the right partnership and investors who can add value. We want smart money, we want investors who can bring us the connection, the advice, the guidance we need to become a major player in this market,” he told DEALSTREETASIA after presenting at the recent <a style="color: #000080" href="http://academy.mymagic.my/en/ma2015/" target="_blank">MaGIC Academy Symposium 2015</a>.
Lakhiani said that the company is now in talks with local venture capitalists, as well as from Silicon Valley, Europe and Australia.
“The main target is to be the most successful technology IPO from Malaysia, we believe we can do that  in the next three to four years,” he said.
Malaysia has produced some notable technology IPOs in the region, such as JobStreet Corp Berhad (MYR10 million in 2004) and Catcha Group&#8217;s iProperty.com.my (A$7.5 million in 2007 on ASX). In fact, <a style="color: #000080" href="https://mymagic.my/en/" target="_blank">MaGIC</a> chief executive <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.thestar.com.my/Metro/SMEBiz/Columns/2015/07/20/Regional-exposure-vital-for-startups/" target="_blank">Cheryl Yeoh noted in her column</a> on a local daily in July, that more foreign venture capital funds have started to set up shop in Malaysia upon realising that 80 per cent of Southeast Asia’s biggest tech IPOs are founded by Malaysian entrepreneurs.
The Kuala Lumpur-based company was first set up in New York in 2003, and has been bootstrapping all this time.
Mindvalley’s business is in providing digital courses that focus on personal development and wellbeing, rather than teaching subjects like in the usual education curriculum.
In its entirety, the company runs 20 businesses online in health, fitness, meditation and transformational education. Its Mindvalley Media brands cater to five languages &#8211; English, Russian, Italian, Polish and Spanish.
Lakhiani shared that last year, the company successfully built a technology for the educators and online academies in Mindvalley, that has enabled the business to monetise really well.
“We are the stage right now where our technology is ready for full-scale monetisation. We are looking to get into schools and companies (and) when we hit this level, we want to move as fast as we can,” he said.
Lakhiani commented that Mindvalley’s three online academies &#8211; <a style="color: #000080" href="http://mindvalleyacademy.com/" target="_blank">Mindvalley Academy</a>, <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.omvana.com/" target="_blank">Omvana</a> and its latest <a style="color: #000080" href="http://soulvana.com/" target="_blank">Soulvana</a> &#8211; have been doing well, and that the business has crossed the MYR100 million revenue milestone that small and medium companies seek to achieve.
“We are seeking investment now so that we can get the best developers, expand our team, really grab this market by the horns,’ he said.
<h3>Expanding the mind</h3>
In terms of expansion plans, Mindvalley intends to enter the K-12 market in the next few years.
Mindvalley’s market is global especially in English-speaking countries. “This is the market taking courses for improving human potential, distributed via really good technology,” Lakhiani said.
“We can call it the future of publishing. Where in the past people learn through best-selling books, we are getting best-selling authors in, we are getting their content out on learning platforms and apps,” he added, “Then we have a distribution model that gets the content to consumers, to companies and to schools.”
Last year, Lakhiani shared further, Mindvalley pivoted its business model. “Rather than working with single authors, which is very slow, we were able to scale from nine authors to about 200 authors now because we built that technology, that framework so now we can scale rapidly,” he said.
Mindvalley’s goal is now to have on board over 10,000 authors and growing its pool of 500,000 paying customers.
“We have gone from transactional customers to a subscription business model, which has been helping our business grow,” he said.
Rather than talking about targets, Lakhiani preferred to refer to the company’s goals as its dream.
“Our dream is to get one billion people on our platform in the next 10 years and thus be able to transform the curriculum of the global education. Right now, we are a tiny fraction of that still,” he said.
Looking ahead, Mindvalley’s website states a few major plans the company has in mind over the next two years.
In 2016, the company plans to launch <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.tribelearn.com/" target="_blank">TribeLearn</a>, a peer-to-peer learning platform, as well as Upfinder, a marketplace that connects customers to top transformational coaches in their areas.
Mindvalley also aims to launch an online gym <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.vibrantly.com/" target="_blank">Vibrantly</a> in 2016, designed for corporations and governments.
In 2017, the company will begin exploring K-12 and tertiary education offerings. Renaissance High School, targeted to be launched then, is a new experimental education model designed to help teenagers develop skills to become visionaries and problem solvers, while Envision University aims to reintroduce the format and content in tertiary education.
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