Unacademy Acquires Edtech Startup PrepLadder For $50 Mn

Indian edtech platform Unacademy, on Tuesday (July 7), acquired PrepLadder, a postgraduate medical entrance exam preparation platform for $50Mn. The acquisition is expected to strengthen Unacademy’s presence in the medical entrance examinations categories such as the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical post-graduation courses. 

Earlier this year, Unacademy had acquired edtech startup Kreatryx to strengthen its presence in the GATE and ESE segments in the test prep market, and Mumbai-based competitive programming platform CodeChef.

PrepLadder provides preparation materials for medical entrance exams such as NEET PG, AIIMS PG, NEET SS, and FMGE, with a vision of providing affordable educational materials to students to help them in their preparation for postgraduate medical entrance exams. PrepLadder has expert educators teaching over 85,000 active subscribers. The acquisition was first reported by Morning Context.

Speaking on the acquisition, Unacademy cofounder and CEO Gaurav Munjal said, “As we strengthen our position as a market leader in the test prep market, bringing PrepLadder on board will play a strategic role for Unacademy in the medical entrance examinations category.”

PrepLadder cofounder Deepanshu Goyal added, “Unacademy and PrepLadder are working towards the common goal of making quality education accessible to all. We believe that the synergies between both products will truly create a mark in the industry.”

The Bengaluru-headquartered Unacademy has, in the last three months, seen an unprecedented surge in demand on its online platform. With the imposition of a country-wide lockdown, there was increased emphasis on online classes and virtual learning. The platform saw a 100% increase in its subscribers during this period, with the average daily watch time of educational videos on its platform also witnessing a 100% growth. 

Further, 525,000 learners attempted various mock tests on the platform for competitive examinations such as UPSC, NEET-PG, and CAT among others during this period.

Indian Edtech Market To Be Worth $1.96 Bn By 2021

The Sequoia-backed edtech startup Unacademy had raised $50 Mn last year Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. Unacademy is one of the leading players in India’s edtech market, which according to estimates, is expected to be worth $1.96 Bn by 2021. According to Inc42 Datalabs, there were 3,500 edtech startups in India in 2018. Between 2014 to 2018, 182 edtech startups were funded with a total of $1.34 Bn.

According to SimilarWeb, based on a study of 35 top online learning platforms, the edtech segment saw a 26% increase in user visits between April 2019 to March 2020, as compared to April 2018 – March 2019. Further, the first 28 days of lockdown in India edtech segment saw 128.8 Mn visits (on average, 4.6Mn daily visits) as compared to 102.2 Mn average visits between April 2019 – Feb 2020.