Zomato's Deepinder Goyal joins Unacademy board

Zomato's Deepinder Goyal, who is already an investor of Unacademy, has now joined the Board of Directors at the edtech unicorn.

Thursday October 21, 2021 , 2 min Read

Deepinder Goyal, CEO and Co-founder of Zomato , has joined the board edtech unicorn Unacademy , announced Founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal on Twitter.

Deepinder is an existing investor in Unacademy, having participated in the edtech startup's $440 million Series H funding round in August. Other investors of Unacademy include Oyo Founder Ritesh Agarwal, Zeta Founder Bhavin Turakhia.

From our first meeting in 2016 to our latest one last week, Deepinder Goyal has always proven to be a great supporter and mentor for Unacademy and for me personally as well. I’m stoked to share that he will be joining the Unacademy Board. Welcome @deepigoyal, let’s crack it!
— Gaurav Munjal (@gauravmunjal) October 21, 2021

Thanking him, the Zomato CEO tweeted, "I think Unacademy is one of the best product companies being made in India, and I am looking forward to learning from you and the team."

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In a press statement by Unacademy, Gaurav further said, “Deepinder has been an advisor for several years and it was only a matter of time before that association transformed into a formal partnership. His experience with building and scaling a successful consumer technology company will help us tremendously as we build the country’s largest learning platform.”

Last month, the edtech unicorn also announced the elevation of its Chief Marketing Officer Karan Shroff as a co-founder of the company.

Unacademy was originally started as a YouTube channel by Gaurav in 2010. The startup was officially launched in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini. Today, it has a learning platform with a growing network of 60,000+ registered educators and over 62 million learners.

Last September, it became a unicorn, following a $145 million funding round led by SoftBank at a valuation of $1.45 billion.

At present, the Indian startup ecosystem boasts of five unicorns from the edtech sector, with the other four being BYJU'S, Eruditus, Vedantu, and upGrad. The edtech market in India has intensified following the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has increased the demand for their services.

It has also witnessed heightened mergers and acquisitions (M&A) within the segment, with Unacademy and BYJU'S emerging as the most aggressive of the lot.

Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta