Unacademy’s valuation spikes over 70% to $3.44 Bn as it raises $440 Mn led by Temasek

Edtech company Unacademy has raised $440 million in its Series H round led by Temasek along with participation from 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.

Unacademy has raised the fresh round at a post-money valuation of $3.44 billion, said the company in a press release. This is a  more than 70% jump in the company’s valuation since its last round when it was valued at $2 billion in November 2020.

Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and CEO of Unacademy said that the proceeds will be utilised to scale its three products including newly launched Relevel and Graphy. While Relevel helps people get their dream job irrespective of their educational background, Graphy empowers creators to build their online businesses to sell digital goods including NFTs.

Apart from the primary round, Unacademy is also facilitating a secondary share sale of $20 million to provide exits to one of its early investors and some angel investors.

The two waves of coronavirus accelerated the growth and popularity of edtech companies in the past 15 months as educational institutions including brick and mortar coaching classes had to face shutdowns for several months due to the pandemic. Unacademy said that it witnessed an 80-100% growth during the period. 

According to an ET report, Unacademy’s test preparation vertical is clocking a revenue rate of $200-million whereas its K-12 category has an $18 million annualised run rate. While the company’s annual financials for FY21 is yet to come, it claimed an annual revenue run rate of around $140 million for FY21 in September 2020.

Unacademy has amassed 6 million monthly active users or MAU of which 6,00,000 or 10% are paid subscribers and has more than 50,000 registered educators on the platform.

Last week, Unacademy had also announced Teacher Stock Options (TSOPs) for its educators. Under the scheme, the company will grant over $40 million to all educators on its platform over the next few years. According to Munjal, over 300 educators are already eligible for the grant which they will get immediately.

In terms of fundraising, Byju’s is leading the chart with more than $1.5 billion in 2021. Besides back to back fundraising, top layer players have been on an acquisition binge, reducing competition as well as filling gaps in their own offerings.  Where Byju’s has collected 15 startups through acquisitions, Unacademy has acquired 10 startups since its inception. The most recent acquisition by the company was the live game streaming platform Rheo Tv.

Vedantu has also made two acquisitions -- Instasolv and Pedagogy -- in 2021. Entrackr had exclusively reported about the acquisition of Pedagogy by Vedantu on July 15.