Unacademy, an edtech startup, has closed a funding event of $440 million led by Temasek, SoftBank, Tiger, others. The current funding round helped it to reach a valuation of $3.4 billion. Founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh, Unacademy started its journey as a Youtube channel and became a promising edtech startup in 2015.
Unacademy’s Valuation Surges to $3.4 Billion
Edtech sector is one of the sectors that have benefitted a lot from lockdowns and the Covid pandemic. Byju’s has become the most valuable Indian startup at a valuation of $16.5 billion, while edtech firms like Unacademy and Vedantu are also showing exponential growth. In a recent financing event, Unacademy accelerated its growth further by the fundraising of $440 million.
The current funding round saw active participation from Temasek, Tiger Global, SoftBank, and General Atlantic said co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal. Edtech startup’s valuation is surged by 70% to $3 4 billion, he added. Other investors like Mirae Asset, Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal and OYO Rooms founder Ritesh Agarwal also participated in the funding round.
Edtech was valued at around $2 billion in November 2020 in the last funding round. Unacademy has collected a total of $860 million in its different funding rounds to date.
The company will continue to build and scale products, innovate and experiment, create value for shareholders and not ‘mis-sell in an industry which is known for its bad sales tactics’, said Munjal.
Talking about future development, Munjal said that the group will scale or continue scaling three of its products on offer, Unacademy, Relevel, and Graphy. The startup provides a platform to aspirants who want to crack exams like IAS, prestigious government exams, IIT-JEE, and others. Relevel assists people in bagging their dream job irrespective of their educational background and Graphy empowers creators to build online businesses to sell digital goods.
Unacademy Growth
Founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh, Unacademy was a simple Youtube channel in 2010. After getting a good response from Youtube users, the Unacademy channel began its journey as an edtech firm in 2015.
Within two years of its startup journey, Unacademy becomes India’s largest online learning platform with over 1 million learners and 40,000 live classes. In 2020, Unacademy further strengthened its operations by acquiring edtech startups like Kreatryx, PrepLadder, and Codechef. The startup also launched the Graphy app to bring creators online for selling their digital goods.
Currently, Unacademy claims to have over 14,000 educators with 50+ million active users. The startup conducts over 2000 live classes every day and provides online education for over 60 exam categories.
Indian edtech firms are growing their online presence at a rapid pace, buoyed by home learning as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns. Unacedmy competes with mighty Byju’s that has recently acquired Toppr and Great Learning. Aakash Institute, WhiteHat Jr, Osmo, and Epic are the other noted acquisitions of Byju’s. Vedantu, Classplus, and Teachmint are the other competitors of Unacademy.
As per the Goldman Sachs report, India’s edtech sector will start generating $5 billion in revenue by 2025. The research firm also reported that the Indian edtech firms recorded a revenue of $1 billion in 2020.
