Exclusive: Unacademy Launches In US With Medical Test Prep Courses

India’s second most valued edtech unicorn Unacademy has entered the US market with its freshly launched programme for USMLE® test preparation. The course is a paid subscription for the US medical licensing examination and will start from March 15, 2022. 

The new course will help a MD (Doctor of Medicine) to get test preparation for clearing the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE®) in the US. 

Going ahead with this plan, the unicorn has slashed its subscription fee from $999 to $199 (INR 15,000 approx). It claims the course will have 800 hours of comprehensive video lectures, tests and practice questions by top educators. 

It will have more than 300 hours of review lectures, mock tests and assessments, and the candidates will have access to over 3,000 questions related to the United States Medical Licensing Examination tests. 

As per Google, the course website was first published on February 18, 2022. 

As per Unacademy’s USMLE page, the test preparation for Step 1 examination will start from March 15 and will be wrapped up by May 31, 2022. To carry forward with this specific course, Unacademy has roped in known people from the medical world such as Dr Najeeb (Anatomy, Physiology, Pharmacology), and Dr Eric Nielson. 

As per the United States Medical Licensing Examination website, the examination comprises three parts:

1. Step 1: This test assesses whether a candidate understands and can apply important concepts of the sciences basic to the practice of medicine, with special emphasis on principles and mechanisms underlying health, disease, and modes of therapy. 
2. Step 2 CK: This test assesses an examinee’s ability to apply medical knowledge, skills, and understanding of clinical science essential for the provision of patient care under supervision and includes emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention.
3. Step 3: This test assesses whether the candidate can apply medical knowledge and understanding of biomedical and clinical science essential for the unsupervised practice of medicine, with emphasis on patient management in ambulatory settings. It is the final examination in the USMLE sequence leading to a license to practice medicine without supervision. 

At present, Unacademy is only offering the test preparation for Step 1, but as per its website, it will soon offer Step 2 and Step 3 in the coming months. The course fee of the remaining course is unknown. 

Unacademy is yet to respond to Inc42’s queries. We will update once we hear from them. 

The development comes almost on the heels of Inc42 exclusively reporting that the edtech startup is also looking to launch offline experience centres dubbed as ‘Unacademy Stores’. Earlier this month, Inc42 sources informed that the startup is looking to commence its physical presence starting with the Delhi NCR region.

The development is in parallel with its rival and country’s most valued edtech startup BYJU’s going hybrid with BYJU’s Learning Centre. 

Last week, Unacademy also launched its celebrity teaching courses i.e. Unacademy Icons, with Sachin Tendulkar taking the first class for cricket. Inc42 had reported about this foray in January this year. 

Founded in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini, Unacademy claims to have more than 50,000 registered educators and more than 62 Mn learners. It offers learnings in 14 languages across 5,000 cities. BYJU’s, on the other hand, the country’s most valued startup at $21 Bn claims to have enrolled 100 Mn learners on its platform. 

Unacademy over the course of years has raised more than $850 Mn in funding. Recently it raised its Series H round worth $440 Mn at $3.4 Bn valuation from Singapore’s Temasek, SoftBank, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, among other HNIs. 

Unacademy in FY21 spent INR 2,029.9 Cr to earn INR 397.6 Cr. Its loss was pegged at INR 1,537.4 Cr in FY21. Here’s a detailed report of its financial performance. 

It has to be highlighted that Byju Raveendran-led BYJU’s has been flexing its muscle in the US since last year. BYJU’s last year in July had acquired US-based digital reading platform EPIC for $500 Mn and US-based coding platform Tynker for around $200 Mn. 

BYJU’s had in 2019 acquired US-based maker of educational games Osmo for $120 Mn. BYJU’s counts North America as one of its important markets for revenue and to further strengthen its dominance, it has announced to invest $1Bn for the same. 

In an interview with Forbes, Byju Raveendran had said that he has been eyeing the US market for a long time and stressed that Math and Coding are universal subjects which helped them launch BYJU’s Future School in the US last year. 

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