[Funding alert] Facebook, Sequoia, General Atlantic invest $110M in edtech startup Unacademy

Bengaluru-based edtech startup Unacademyon Wednesday announced that it has raised $110 million in Series E round of funding from new investors Facebookand General Atlantic, along with Sequoia India.

Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director, Facebook India, said, 

“With this investment in Unacademy, we are reinforcing our commitment to the Indian startup ecosystem as well as investing in a company that is transforming learning in India. We love that the company is fundamentally democratising education and driving innovation in new learning models.”  

The round also saw participation from existing investors such as Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital and Blume Ventures. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO of Flipkartand Sujeet Kumar, Co-founder of Udaanalso participated in this round of funding.

Unacademy said it will utilise the funding to further penetrate the test preparation categories, launching more exam categories, acquiring top educators, and creating exceptional learning experiences for the learners through great content and product. 

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In addition to raising the funding, Unacademy also provided exits to some of the angel investors.

Gaurav Munjal, Co-founder and CEO, Unacademy, said, 

“Our goal from day one has been to democratise education and make quality education accessible to everyone. We do that by bringing the best educators and content on our platform and ensuring it is accessible to everyone across the country. We now have more than 90,000 active subscribers.”

“Our goal is to democratise education and become not just the largest educational organisation but the largest consumer internet story out of India,” he added.

Unacademy was started in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh as a platform for educators and learners with educators creating educational videos and offering Live interactive classes with access to more than 30 exam categories for the learners. 

The edtech startup now claims to have more than one million videos on its platform. At present, the platform has over 10,000 educators who have created educational videos on Unacademy. 

In 2019, Unacademy launched its subscription for various examinations which gives access to the learners throughout the country to top educators and structured learning. Within a year, Unacademy has more than 90,000 active subscribers. 70 percent of its users are from Tier II and III cities. More than 700 educators take classes at Unacademy every day.

With the new round of funding, the startup plans to launch more test prep categories, onboard more great educators and work on making its content the best in the industry and aims to be a household name.        

(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)