Unacademy acquires majority stake in TapChief

Unacademy has announced the acquisition of TapChief, a networking platform for professionals in a deal which will allow the edtech unicorn to make its foray into a new segment of readying students for jobs.

TapChief is set to join Unacademy with a valuation of Rs 100 crore and with this move, has offered an exit to all the existing investors of TapChief, the company said in a statement.

While the company didn’t disclose details of the deal, three Entrackr sources have signalled that the investors and outgoing founders of TapChief have got a secondary exit at the company valuation of Rs 47.5 crore. "Unacademy poured in another Rs 26.5 crore in primary capital at a post-money valuation of Rs 100 crore," added one of the sources on condition of anonymity.

TapChief’s team will help the Gaurav Munjal-led firm to build and scale 'Unacademy Pro’ which will be rolled out in the coming months. Unacademy Pro will start training software engineers and management students in sales.

Sources indicate that the deal which will see the co-founder and CEO of TapChief Shashank Murali join Unacademy while Binay Krishna and Arjun Krishna, the other two co-founders, will move on. “The transactions will be executed by the first half of March and TapChief’s website will cease to operate,” said the second person on who also wished not to be named.

Entrackr has reached out to Unacademy for more details and they are yet to respond.

Both companies have been working together since January 2017 when they collaborated to launch courses on job preparation for freshers, graduates and working professionals. Since its inception, TapChief has raised around $2.5 million from over 50 investors including 500 Startups, AngelList India, Stanford Angels, Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Mekin Maheshwari.

The five-year-old company empowers professionals to interact and learn from experts, work with businesses and aggregate their personal brand online. The company claims to have more than 150,000 registered users who collaborate with experts and take up short-term professional projects. TapChief claims to have 150 enterprise customers across various sectors.

Lately, Unacademy has started offering personal and self-development courses on its platform. According to its website, it offers 2,000 plus courses in the two categories. Recently, one of the company’s top executives claimed that Unacademy has surpassed 4,75,000 active subscriber base. 

If the company manages to scale Unacademy Pro on the lines of its core business then it would help the SoftBank-backed firm to differentiate with its arch-rival -- Byju’s -- whose playground is limited to K-12 and entrance clearance space.