Edtech startup Unacademy gets $440 mn funding, valuation crosses $3.44 bn

Unacademy Group's valuation has grown almost ten times in 18 months, riding on demand for online training

Edtech startup Unacademy said Monday it has raised $440 million in a funding round led by Temasek and General Atlantic, Tiger Global, and Softbank Vision Fund pitching in as other participants.

The latest fundraise takes the valuation of Unacademy Group to $3.44 billion. This is up from $2 billion valuation in November last year.

The Series H funding round also had participation from Aroa Ventures, the family office of OYO Founder Ritesh Agarwal, and Deepinder Goyal, Co-Founder and CEO at Zomato. Some angel investors exited Unacademy in this round.

Bengaluru-based Unacademy Group’s valuation has grown almost ten times in 18 months: one of the fastest growth rates by a mid-stage consumer internet startup in India. The latest funding round follows one in January 2021 when Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadview Capital and General Atlantic doubled down on their earlier investments through a secondary transaction.

The funding would help Unacademy compete with Byju’s, Vedantu, Simplilearn, UpGrad, Amazon Academy, and traditional education institutes. These companies are jostling to tap India's $180-billion education sector as the coronavirus pandemic forces the learning to go online.

“With funding comes responsibility. To build and scale iconic products of the future that delight our customers and to constantly innovate and experiment,” Unacademy co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal said in a tweet. “To create value for the company’s shareholders and to not mis-sell in an industry which is known for its bad sales tactics.”

Munjal said that there are three major products that the firm will build and scale (or continue scaling). This includes helping people crack life-changing exams, providing a path to get their dream job irrespective of their educational background and empowering creators to build their online businesses to sell digital goods.

After raising mega funding, Unacademy is gearing up to take on decacorn Byju’s and other rivals by tapping the K-12 education space and teaching coding to children. Facebook-backed Unacademy was mainly dominant in the area of exam preparation space. The company is making acquisitions and picking up strategic stakes in firms that would help it to achieve this goal. This month Unacademy acquired Rheo TV, a platform that helps professional game streamers livestream their gameplays and monetise those feeds. Post acquisition, Rheo TV founders Saksham Keshri and Prakash Kumar will join Relevel—an Unacademy Group company that focuses on the Indian job market. The aim is to enable job-seekers to showcase their skills through tests, and secure employment at some of India’s top companies — as co-founders.

Last year, Unacademy picked stake in K-12 learning platform Mastree for $5 million to strengthen its presence in the K-12 learning space. Mastree is building a one-stop subscription product for STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) courses for classes V-VIII. It also acquired the postgraduate medical entrance exam preparation platform, PrepLadder, for $50 million.

Unacademy had acquired Kreatryx, an online preparation platform for GATE and the Engineering Services Exam (ESE), in a cash and stock deal. It had also purchased Coursavy, a platform for UPSC test preparation, for an undisclosed amount.

Unacademy is also scaling up its efforts in the coding space. It had acquired Mumbai-based competitive programming platform, CodeChef.

The firm, founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh in 2015 (and on YouTube in 2010), has become one of the largest learning platforms, with a growing network of over 50,000 registered educators and over 62 million learners. With education being imparted in 14 Indian languages to learners across 5,000 cities, Unacademy said it is changing the way India learns.

This month the firm also announced Teacher Stock Options (TSOPs), the first educator liquidity event for educators on the platform. Over $40 million stocks will be issued to Unacademy educators over the course of the next few years. Over 300 educators will be eligible to receive the stock options with an immediate vesting. Unacademy said all educators are eligible for it. As of today, 300 educators get it. As more educators hit the tenure slabs, they will become eligible too.

$3.44 bn valuation, a nearly 10X jump in 18 months.

$440 mn, funding would help Uncademy compete with Byju’s, Vedantu, Simplilearn, UpGrad, Amazon Academy.

$180 bn, the education opportunity that these companies are eyeing.

The funding would help Unacademy build and scale products, create value for shareholders.

It would also help in acquisitions and strategic stakes.

Rheo TV, Mastree, Kreatryx, Coursavy, CodeChef, acquisitions made by Unacademy.

$40 mn, stocks will be issued to Unacademy educators over the course of the next few years.