Tiger Global, others acquire $50 Mn worth of shares in Unacademy via secondary transaction

Unacademy has concluded a new secondary transaction round in which Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadview Capital and General Atlantic have acquired $50 million worth of shares from existing investors of the edtech unicorn.

According to Unacademy, the latest transaction follows a funding round in November 2020 when Tiger Global and Dragoneer Investment Group invested in the Bengaluru-based firm at a valuation of $2 billion.

This is the fourth tranche for Unacademy since February last year. Since then, the company has mopped up close to $350 million including $110 million Series E round, $150 million Series F round and $86 million Series G round.

However, the Gaurav Munjal-led company has not disclosed the name of the existing investors who sold their stake in the latest secondary transaction.

The year 2020 has been phenomenal for Unacademy, especially during the Covid-19 induced lockdown when edtech platforms saw a bump in users engagement and daily time spent. As per the latest data shared by Unacademy, it has more than 48,000 educators teaching in over 14 Indian languages and having presence across 5,000 cities. According to the company, over 150,000 live classes are conducted on the platform each month and the collective watch time across platforms is over 2 billion minutes per month.

Besides rapid growth, Unacademy made half a dozen acquisitions in last year which include PrepLadder, Mastree, Kreatryx, CodeChef, Coursavy and NeoStencil.

Unacademy’s annual financial report for FY20 also reflected a decent improvement as compared to the previous fiscal year. The company’s revenue from operations jumped 5.6X from Rs 11.7 crore in FY19 to nearly Rs 65 crore during the fiscal ended in March 2020. 

While the company’s losses grew 3.3X to Rs 300.8 crore during FY20, it managed to improve its EBITDA margins from -765.93% in FY19 to -456.72% in FY20.

The development comes on the heels of a media report claiming that Byju’s is acquiring the brick & mortar test prep company Aakash Educational Services in a $1 billion deal. The acquisition would boost the prospects of the $12 billion valued company which is also eyeing an IPO in 2021.