Tiger Global, others buy $50 mn shares from existing investors of Unacademy

The edtech unicorn has concluded secondary share transaction. Deal helps Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadview Capital and General Atlantic double down on their investment

Edtech unicorn Unacademy, has concluded a new secondary transaction round in which Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadview Capital and General Atlantic have increased their stake in the company. As part of the round, the investors have acquired additional shares worth $50 million, doubling down on their investment and conviction in the Unacademy Group’s growth trajectory and future prospects. The latest transaction follows financing round in November 2020 when Tiger Global and Dragoneer Investment Group invested in the Unacademy Group at a valuation of $2 Billion.

“Some of the major investors are buying the shares of the early investors of the company,” said a person familiar with the matter. 

Facebook-backed Unacademy year became the most valued edtech start-up after Byju’s last year, after raising undisclosed funding from SoftBank and Tiger Global. The fund-raise followed a round in September last year when it raised $150 million, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. At that time, Unacademy's valuation had trebled to $1.45 billion in just six months.

 

Unacademy is mainly dominant in the area of exam preparation space. But it is now gearing up to take on Byju’s by tapping the K-12 education space and teaching coding to children. The firm, founded in 2015 (and on YouTube in 2010), has become one of the largest learning platforms, with over 48,000 educators teaching in over 14 Indian languages, and learners spread across 5,000 cities. Over 150,000 live classes are conducted on the platform each month. The collective watch time across platforms is over 2 billion minutes per month.

Flush with fresh funds, the Bengaluru-based company is planning to make acquisitions and pick strategic stakes in firms that would help it to achieve this goal, according to sources.

Last year, Unacademy picked 51 per cent 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. Last year, Unacademy acquired Kreatryx, an online preparation platform for GATE and the Engineering Services Exam (ESE), in a cash and stock deal. Last September, it purchased Coursavy, a platform for UPSC test preparation, for an undisclosed amount.