Unacademy is one of the largest edtech platforms in India. The startup is based in Bangalore and was founded as a youtube channel. Presently, the startup has over 45,000 educators offering both free and paid live classes. The startup now plans to do a Rs 30 crores ESOP buyback programme in December 2020.
About edtech startup Unacademy
The startup began its journey as a Youtube channel back in 2015. Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh started the channel as a medium to teach students and has now successfully made it into a startup with over 45,000 educators and 40 million students. Unacademy is based in Bangalore and has partnered up with many brands and is also backed by several notable investors.
Some of the notable investors in the company are Facebook, Softbank, General Atlantic, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners, SAIF Partners, Steadview Capital and Blume Ventures.
Details about the buyback
The company has planned the buyback for 10th December and is the 2nd liquidity event in the 5-year journey of the startup. It will be open for both former and current employees of the startup. A statement said, “All vested ESOPs until December 10, 2020, will be eligible for the buyback and current and exited employees may liquidate between 25% to 100% of vested ESOPs based on a specified scheme”.
The size of the ESOP buyback will be around 25-30 crores depending on the number of ESOPs liquidated by the current and former employees. It is also important to note how big the company has got. In September 2019 the company did a similar buyback for around 3 crores which is 1/10th of this year’s amount.
As for employees who will be eligible, the criteria is minimum one year of service to the startup. Those who have completed one year or more with the company can liquidate their ESOPs easily.
Future of the startup
The startup has been raising a good amount of funds lately. Even a month back it announced that it would be receiving Rs 1,125 crores from SoftBank Vision fund 2. It also expects existing investors like Facebook to participate. The edtech startup has a lot of scope for growth with everything moving online due to the pandemic. Reports say that India’s edtech market might be worth over $10.4 billion in the next 5 years and Unacademy might be one of the thriving ones in the same.
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