Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal Joins Unacademy’s Board

Edtech unicorn Unacademy has added recently-listed Zomato’s founder Deepinder Goyal to its board. The development comes a few weeks after Goyal invested in Unacademy during its $440 Mn Series H round of funding along with Zeta’s Bhavin Turakhia. 

In a tweet, announcing the development, Gaurav Munjal, Cofounder and CEO, Unacademy Group, said that Goyal has been mentoring him since 2016. 

“Deepinder has been an advisor for several years and it was only a matter of time before that association transformed into a formal partnership. His experience with building and scaling a successful consumer technology company will help us tremendously as we build the country’s largest learning platform,” Munjal said.

The development also comes three months after Goyal joined the board of directors in savings app provider magicpin as an independent director.  

The second most valued edtech startup in India – Unacademy was founded in 2015 by Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini. The edtech unicorn was valued at $3.4 Bn during its last round.

Unacademy was initially started as a YouTube channel, much like Byju Raveendran’s BYJU’s. At present, the edtech giant boasts of 50K teachers and has over 62 Mn students compared to BYJU’s100 Mn. 

Unacademy offers education in 14 Indian languages to students present in 5,000 cities. The company enjoys the support of marquee investors such as Elevation Capital, Blume Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Steadview Capital, Facebook, Tiger Global among others.

Unacademy has also acquired over 10 startups in the course of two years including Mastree, CodeChef, Kreatryx, Prepladder. Earlier this month, Unacademy group’s Graphy acquired Spayee, a SaaS platform for creators, to consolidate its offering in the creator ecosystem. 

The startup in FY20 recorded INR 86 Cr revenue with significant expenses of INR 386.7 Cr resulting in a total loss of INR 300 Cr. 

The edtech giant recently made a fresh infusion of $20 Mn in its group company Relevel. The investment came almost four months after Unacademy launched Relevel, a platform that helps job seekers to find jobs after taking tests within 15 days. 

According to Inc42 Plus, in the first three quarters of 2021, Indian edtech startups have raised close to $3.2 Bn in investments, mostly driving on the back of uncertainty around the reopening of schools and colleges induced due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

As per Inc42 Plus analysis, the market size of edtech in India is estimated to grow 3.7x in the next five years, from $2.8 Bn (2020) to $10.4 Bn (2025). Amid the $10 Bn market size, K12 learning solutions are expected to account for 41% of the total edtech market.

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