Unacademy turns unicorn with $150-mn fundraise
Valuation jumps to $1.45 bn; only unicorn in edtech space after Byju’s
Gaurav Munjal’s edtech start-up Unacademy may have become the newest unicorn in the country, but in his words it’s still Day 1 for the company. Unacademy, which he started as a hobby on Youtube in 2010, has raised $150 million (about 1,125 crore) in a funding round led by Japanese conglomerate Softbank, valuing it at $1.45 billion — a three-fold jump in just six months. This also makes the Bengaluru-based firm the second unicorn in the country’s edtech space after Byju’s.
Existing investors General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Facebook, and Blume Ventures also participated in the round. Unacademy said it planned to utilise the funds to launch new products and build a world-class team and organisation.
“Learning from the best experts to achieve a life goal has mostly been a privilege, available only to those living in the top few cities of the country. At Unacademy, we are breaking that barrier and helping people achieve their life’s most important goals, by giving them access to the best coaching from experts in the field,” said Munjal, cofounder and CEO, Unacademy.
“We’re delighted to welcome Softbank as a partner to that vision. We started with test preparation and with this partnership, we will launch other goals on our platform,” added
Munjal, who will soon turn 30. Munjal’s father, a doctor, wanted him to join the medical field, but he was inclined to become a software engineer. In school, he built a KBC kind of quiz programme on Qbasic, and the entire class was shown the product.
He always had the spark to create things and eventually wanted to create something that had an impact on people. That is how his journey as an entrepreneur began with Flat.to, a platform for college students to find accommodation, which was later acquired by Commonfloor in 2014. A year later, Munjal, along with his friends Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh, launched Unacademy, which initially started as an initiative on Youtube in 2010.
Sumer Juneja, partner at Softbank Investment Advisers, said his organisation had been closely tracking Unacademy for the last 18 months and was impressed by its growth, quality of product, and consumer engagement. “They are truly democratising education in India and we look forward to helping them scale even further.”