Ed tech firm Unacademy raises $50 Mn in a recent round of funding
The Bengaluru-based company, Unacademy has raised $50 Mn from Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. Founders Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini also participated in a personal capacity along with Aakrit Vaish (Co-founder and CEO, Haptik) and Sujeet Kumar (Co-founder and CEO, Udaan).
Last year, the edtech firm had raised $21 Mn Series C funding round from Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures.
Launched in 2011 by Munjal, Saini, Hemesh Singh, and Sachin Gupta, Unacademy has till now raised a total of $88.6 Mn. With more than 400 educators, the company claims to have 100 Mn monthly views across its various platforms such as Unacademy, Unacademy Plus, Wifistudy, Chamomile Tea with Toppers, Unacademy Studios and The Solutionists.
As the co-founders experience growth and engagement, they now plan to further expand their operations.
CEO Unacademy, Munjal shared, “Our mission has been to provide every learner in the country access to the highest quality of education. We are seeing unprecedented growth and engagement from learners in smaller towns and cities, and are also very humbled to see that top-quality educators are choosing Unacademy as their primary platform to reach out to students. In the last few months, we have taken bigger strides toward achieving this mission.”
The market surely provides great opportunities for Unacademy as the Indian edtech segment is predicted to be a $1.96 Bn market by 2021. But it competes with others like Byju, the Raveendran-led unicorn, which in March raised more than half-a-billion dollars ($540 Mn) as part of its Series F round led by General Atlantic and Tencent. In May 2019, another Gurugram-based edtech startup CollegeDekho also raised $8 Mn in its Series B funding round.
Unacademy would have to hence work on making its product unique and package it well to be able to gain more market share and attract more learners. How the Bengaluru-based firm increases its market share, amidst such competion is to look forward to.
