Edtech company Unacademy Group has raised $440 million from Temasek, Tiger Global, SoftBank and General Atlantic, said co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal. The edtech firm is now valued at $3.4 billion, he added. Mirae Asset, Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal and OYO Rooms founder Ritesh Agarwal also participated in the funding round.
Unacademy has raised around $860 million to-date. In November last year, the edtech firm was valued at $2 billion.
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.
The CEO said that the group will scale or continue scaling three of its products on offer, Unacademy, Relevel and Graphy. Unacademy helps people crack ‘life-changing exams’, 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. Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor in this transaction.
Founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh, Unacademy began as a YouTube channel in 2010 and transformed into an educational technology platform in 2015. By 2017, it had become India’s largest online learning platform with over 1 million learners and 40,000 live classes, it said. Last year they acquired Kreatryx, PrepLadder and Codechef as well as launched the Graphy app.
The edtech platform has over 50 million active learners and over 14,000 educators. It holds over 2,000 live classes every day and has over 60 exam categories.
This funding comes as edtech firms are scaling at a rapid pace, buoyed by home learning as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns. In India, Unacademy competes with the likes of Byju’s, which is the country’s most valuable startup, and had acquired Toppr and Great Learning late last month. It had also recently acquired Aakash Educational Services, WhiteHat Jr, Osmo and Epic. Unacademy is also competing with platforms like Vedantu, Teachmint and Classplus.
According to Goldman Sachs analysts, India’s online education market is estimated to generate $5 billion revenue by 2025, from $1 billion last year.
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