Edtech startup Unacademy sees significant spike in revenue, users in April 2020 amid coronavirus lockdown

Unacademy, the edtech startup co-founded by Gaurav Munjal, recorded a massive growth for the month of April 2020, breaking all its previous records – in terms of revenue, video views, watch time, etc. – as it leveraged the coronavirus lockdown with more users coming online to learn.

A tweet put out by Gaurav, who is also the CEO, claimed that Unacademy’s revenue for the month of April 2020, is higher than years of 2017, 2018, and the first half of 2019 combined. “This has been a phenomenal month for us,” the tweet said.

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The nationwide lockdown since March 25 due to the coronavirus pandemic seems to have improved the business prospects of certain segments of the startup ecosystem like content, telemedicine, and edtech, among others.

In fact, the lockdown scenario has spurred the growth of edtech startups as there was much higher interest among users to consume educational content online.

According to Gaurav, Unacademy registered 82 percent rise in revenue for April, and it was 10X higher as compared to the same period last year.

In an earlier interaction with a news agency in February, Gaurav had said, “Right now, we have 90,000 active paid subscribers. My goal is to take this to a million in the next two years. That would make our revenue 10 times from here. We are looking to $250-300 million ARR (annual recurring revenue), and for that, we need capital, teachers, and so on."

According to Unacademy, it recorded 165 million video views on YouTube in April – highest for the startup since it began operations in 2015. The total watch time of these videos stood at 1.4 billion minutes across YouTube, special classes, free, as well as via subscription.

In April, the edtech startup conducted 1,20,000 live classes and 2,64,000 tests on its platforms, and this was 247 percent as compared to March.

Unacademy, which has raised close to $200 million over the last five years, has some of the leading names like Facebook, Sequoia, Nexus Venture Partners, General Atlantic, among other investors backing it.