Unacademy raises fresh funds at $2 bn valuation

Industry:    2020-11-26

Edtech unicorn Unacademy on Wednesday said it has raised funds from US-based Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group at a valuation of $2 billion.

The company did not disclose the funding amount, but a person familiar with the matter said it was $60-80 million.

The company last raised $150 million in September in a funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, tripling its valuation to $1.45 billion in a span of six months, making it the second-most valued edtech startup after Byju’s. Previously in February, it had raised $110 million from Facebook Inc., General Atlantic and Sequoia at a valuation of $510 million.

The pandemic has accelerated the pace of fund-raising and growth of edtech startups, as educational institutions and offline classes were disrupted, and learning moved online. Both global and domestic investors continue to bet big on these companies, fuelling valuations.

“Our mission from Day One has been to democratize education and make it more affordable and accessible. Today, I’m delighted to welcome Tiger Global and Dragoneer as our partners in the journey. They are both marquee global investors with a history of partnering with innovative companies that are making an impact on people’s lives,” Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and CEO, Unacademy said in a statement.

Founded five years ago by Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh, Unacademy offers test preparation classes for subjects ranging from civil service and banking exams to programming languages. It has over 47,000 educators teaching in more than 14 Indian languages and users across 5,000 cities.

Over 150,000 live classes are conducted on the platform each month, and the monthly collective watch time is over 2 billion minutes.

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