Unacademy's valuation tops $2 bn with funding from Tiger Global, Dragoneer

The latest fundraise follows funding round in September when the company raised an investment of $150 million in a round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 at a $1.45 billion valuation

Adding to the list of phenomenal edtech fund-raises this year, Unacademy has raised a fresh undisclosed investment from Tiger Global Management and US-based Dragoneer Investment Group.
 
The company didn't disclose the funding amount, but said it values Unacademy at $2 billion. The latest fund-raise follows a round in September when it raised $150 million, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. At that time, Unacademy's valuation had trebled to $1.45 billion in six months and became the second-most valued edtech start-up, after Byju’s - which is valued at $10.5 billion.
 
“Our mission from Day One has been to democratise education and make it more affordable and accessible. We have consistently built the most iconic products that deliver high-quality education to everyone,” said Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Unacademy, adding, “I am delighted to welcome Tiger Global and Dragoneer as our partners in the journey. They are both marquee global investors with a history of partnering with innovative companies making an impact on people’s lives.”
 
The start-up was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh in 2015, initially on YouTube in 2010. It has become one of the largest learning platforms, with over 47,000 educators teaching in over 14 Indian languages, and learners spread across 5,000 cities. Over 150,000 live classes are conducted on the platform each month. The collective watch time across platforms is over 2 billion minutes per month.
 
“The opportunity to improve lives through online education is enormous because of its sheer accessibility,” said Scott Shleifer, partner at Tiger Global, adding, “The Unacademy team has innovated rapidly to build a leading platform that is taking education to the farthest corners of India. We are very excited to partner with Unacademy and look forward to seeing it scale up further.”

 
Unacademy also runs a popular programme ‘Legends on Unacademy’, where well-known personalities take live classes for its learners on life lessons. Top personalities such as Indian Captain Virat Kohli, Wikipedia Co-founder Jimmy Wales, Starbucks Co-founder Zev Siegl, entrepreneur Randi Zuckerberg, and former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly have shared their experiences related to hard work, overcoming failures, and moving forward in life.
 
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a watershed moment for India’s edtech sector. Since March, Unacademy has doubled the number of active subscribers. It has opened up the platform to schools and colleges to conduct live classes without any interruptions. It expects to earn an annual recurring revenue of $300 million in the coming years.
 
The country’s $180-billion education sector has gone online to adapt to the new reality, leading to opportunities for edtech firms, including Unacademy, Vedantu, and Byju’s. According to industry insiders, besides top venture capital and private equity players, big tech companies, including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, are eyeing investments in these start-ups.
 
Early this year, social media giant Facebook had placed its bet on Unacademy, when it participated in a $110-million investment round in February. The round, which was led by General Atlantic, also drew funding from Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital, and Blume Ventures. Flipkart’s CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Udaan Co-founder Sujeet Kumar also participated in that round, which, according to sources, gave the company a post-money valuation of $510 million.
 
Also, in less than two months after it raised $500 million in a financing round, edtech decacorn Byju's is learnt to have closed $200 million in a fresh round of funding. This has lifted the Bengaluru-based firm’s valuation to $12 billion - close to $1 billion higher when compared with the previous round.
 
This year, live tutoring platform Vedantu raised $100 million from US-based investment firm Coatue, with participation from existing investors. With this round, the Bengaluru-based firm’s valuation jumped to $600 million.