This year has been very generous to edtech start-ups as most of them are raising enormous funds because of the hike in demand due to COVID-19 pandemic. Adding to the list is Unacademy which has recently raised an undisclosed amount from American investor- Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management.
This fundraiser has turned out to be very significant for the edtech start-up as with this latest funding, Unacademy has recorder valuation over $2 billion.
Unacademy’s valuation growth has been phenomenal this year with being valued at $510 million in February 2020, the becoming a member of the prestigious Unicorn Club by September 2020 with $1.45 billion valuation and now, with the latest funding from Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment, the company is valued at over $2 billion.
Following the pattern, Co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, Gaurav Munjal mentioned in a statement that the aim of the start-up has always been to democratise education for everyone and make it accessible to masses, emphasising on affordability as well. The edtech start-up claims to develop the most iconic educational products that deliver standard high-quality education to everyone who needs it.
As mentioned earlier, Unacademy entered the Unicorn Club in September this year by raising $150 million from popular investment firm, SoftBank. The edtech platform has also raised direct funding from social media giant, Facebook earlier this year, in February which was the company’s second direct investment in India. The start-up was also the official sponsor of the Indian Premier League 2020.
Other existing investors of Unacademy include Blume Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital India and individual Angel investors like Sujeet Kumar- Co-founder of Udaan and Kalyan Krishnamurthy- Chief Executive Officer of Walmart owned e-commerce platform, Flipkart.
Furthermore, Unacademy has recorded a watch time of over 2 billion minutes per month with over 50,000 active educators and presence in over 5000 cities across the nation. The platform also supports 14 different regional languages so that everyone can seek the right education without the language barrier.
Scott Shleifer, Senior Partner at Tiger Global Management says that the opportunity to improve lives by spreading education through online platforms is enormous because of its ease of accessibility. Unacademy has risen phenomenally and the team has innovated rapidly to create a platform that reaches to the farthest corners of India. He added that Tiger Global is excited to back and support Unacademy and is looking forward to scaling the platform even further.
