Edtech Startup Unacademy May Soon Raise $30 Mn Funding

Bengaluru-based edtech startup Unacademy may soon raise $25-30 Mn in a Pre Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital India and other investors.

According to a news report, the latest funding round may value the company at around $100 Mn. The report further added that the funding would be used to fuel its expansion into areas like K-12 and competitive exams like JEE.  

“They are putting their star teachers and are launching online courses; it is almost like a Coursera model. They have had traction due to their YouTube channel and have good traction on the civil services side. They are going to other verticals like JEE and K-12 too, but those need good branding. They are looking to expand and hire more tutors for creating new courses and videos and also for marketing,” a source told Economic Times (ET).

When ET reached out to the company, it declined to comment on the development.

Unacademy is an online learning platform that empowers educators to create courses on various subjects. The platform currently has more than 50,000 lessons online, 1.3 Mn registered users, and 4,000 educators. According to founder Gaurav Munjal, Unacademy lessons were watched more than 25 Mn times in March 2018.

It is also one of the largest education channels on YouTube India with over 2 Mn subscribers.

Unacademy was founded by Gaurav Munjal (ex-founder and CEO of Flatchat) along with Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh, and Sachin Gupta. It was initially launched as an educational YouTube channel in 2011 and then as a free learning platform named Unacademy in January 2016.

In 2017 itself, the startup raised $16 Mn in two rounds of funding from investors like Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, and Blume Ventures.

The rising brigade of startups in India’s edtech ecosystem include names such as Byju’s, UCLID, Avagmah, Embibe, iProf, Simplilearn, Meritnation, Toppr, NeoStencil, and Englishleap, among others.

Byju’s also recently gained the status of a unicorn when a funding infusion, including one by China’s Tencent and BCCL, valued the startup at $1 Bn (INR 6,505 Cr), according to its company filings with the ministry of corporate affairs.

Online education in India is expected to see approximately 8X growth in the next five years. According to a report by Google and KPMG, the edtech market is expected to have a significant impact on the online education sector, which has a potential to touch $1.96 Bn by 2021 from $247 Mn at present.

Keeping their eye on this potential market, edtech startups are making their presence felt in the $100 Bn Indian education sector, according to the IBEF.

With increasing competition in the edtech space, Unacademy’s latest funding push is sure to help the company ramp up its game.

[The development was first reported by ET.]