Exclusive: Edtech Giant Unacademy Expands ESOP Pool Size To $393 Mn

Unacademy has expanded its ESOP pool size by 19.8%. According to its regulatory filing, the edtech giant has increased the ESOP pool size to 286 Mn options from existing 238.7 Mn options.

As per people aware of the development, each option is currently priced at INR 109. This means, the expanded ESOP pool size would be around $393 Mn (INR 3,118 Cr). 

The development comes almost three months after the edtech giant expanded its ESOP pool size to 238 Mn options from 99K options. 

Unacademy recently laid off around 1,000 employees. The Gaurav Munjal-led startup recently also forayed into offline coaching centers, starting with Kota, and is locked in a battle with Allen Career Institute. 

Earlier this week, Inc42 exclusively reported that Allen has sued 20 former teachers who have joined Unacademy.

Founded in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini, the Bengaluru-based startup claims to have more than 50,000 registered educators and more than 62 Mn learners. The startup, which provides coaching for engineering, medical and other entrance exams, offers learnings in 14 languages across 5,000 cities. As per its website, Unacademy claims to offer courses for over 60 exams and has over 14K educators. It claims to conduct over 1.5K live classes daily. 

Relevel, an Unacademy Group company which offers jobs and upskilling platform and was started last year, is said to be reaching $12 Mn in annual recurring revenue (ARR) as per Munjal. 

Recently, the startup also launched a new product – Cohesive, a platform that offers software development environment for product teams to test deploy code. 

In FY21, its  loss soared 494% to INR 1,537 Cr, while it recorded sales of INR 397.6 Cr. The startup’s expenditure stood at INR 2,029.9 Cr