Decoding Unacademy’s latest round and shareholding structure

In the past couple of years, edtech startups have scaled fresh highs almost every month in 2021 as the likes of Byju’s and Unacademy have spearheaded back to back funding rounds which seem likely to continue in the future. Where Byju’s has already closed a mega $1.5 billion round this year, Unacademy has mopped up close to half a billion dollars in a mix of primary and secondary rounds in the past six months.

Temasek leads, existing investors follow

The SoftBank-backed company had recently announced a $440 million round led by Temasek at a valuation of $3.44 billion. According to the company, SoftBank, General Atlantic and Tiger Global, Mirae Asset, as well as Zomato Founder Deepinder Goyal and Oyo’s Ritesh Agarwal too participated in the round. Fintrackr went a step ahead to find out the details of the transaction along with the company’s current shareholding structure through its regulatory filings.

As per the filings, Temasek has invested Rs 1,094 crore or $147 million in Unacademy followed by SoftBank and General Atlantic which pumped in Rs 988 crore ($132 million ) and Rs 730 crore ($98.5 million) respectively. Existing backers Tiger Global and Mirae Assets also invested Rs 367 crore($50 million) and Rs 36 crore($4.8 million) respectively. 

The new stakes table 

Fintrackr research observed that Unacademy’s co-founders Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh retain around 15% stake in the company together. Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, SoftBank and General Atlantic are the largest institutional stakeholders of the company, controlling 12.7%, 12.8% and 10.5% stake in the company respectively. Temasek, the lead investor of the new round has acquired 4.38% stake in the company whereas Tiger Global now controls 4.24% stake.

Early backers of Unacademy -- Blume Ventures and Elevation Capital (formerly SAIF Partners) -- retain nearly 5% and 3.4% stake in the company. The complete shareholding structure can be seen below.

Unicorns = low founder stakes?

It’s worth noting that Unacademy is among very few unicorn startups where co-founders have around 15% stake even after the Series H stage. For context, Swiggy co-founders had around 10% stake in the company when it entered its Series I round. Zomato’s early co-founders diluted their stakes below 10% when they raised the first tranche of the Series J round in August last year.

Among the growth stage startups, Byju’s is on top in terms of equity held by co-founders. According to Fintrackr’s estimates, Byju’s Raveendran, his spouse Divya Gokulnath and brother Riju Raveendran still control 23.4% stake in the company as of June 2021.

Besides fundraising, Unacademy is competing neck to neck with Byju’s in terms of acquisitions. While Byju’s has acquired over 15 startups since its inception, Unacademy has taken over 12 startups in the past two years.