Exclusive: Unacademy in talks to acquire Swiflearn

The year 2021 has been of fundraising and consolidation for edtech startups. The ecosystem has already seen over a dozen acquisitions this year and seems like the trend is set to continue. 

After acquiring four companies this year, Unacademy is in talks to take over another one. The company is in talks to acquire Gurugram-based Swiflearn, say two sources aware of the details of the potential transaction.

“Unacademy is in late-stage talks to acquire Swiflearn in a deal worth $15-20 million,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity. 

According to sources, the transaction will be a mix of cash and stock. 

Founded by Abhinav Agarwal and Anand Bakode, Swiflearn is a full-stack online platform for academic courses which provides a personalised learning experience to students. It currently focuses on the K-10 segment and offers free and subscription-based classes.

“Both founders will join Unacademy along with the team members,” said the second source who also requested anonymity. Entrackr couldn’t verify the exact number of Swiflearn’s team members set to join the Bengaluru-based firm.

To be sure, the deal may materialise or its terms change.

Queries sent to Swiflearn didn’t elicit any immediate response while Unacademy’s co-founder and chief executive Gaurav Munjal declined to comment on the story.

According to Swiflearn’s website, it has more than 100 team members, over 900 teachers and 1.24 lakh students on the platform. As for the company’s financial health, it had recorded operating revenue of Rs 62,000 in its first year of operations(FY20). During the period, it recorded a total expenditure of Rs 61 lakh and incurred a loss of Rs 52.79 lakh.

This will be the 11th acquisition for Unacademy since its inception. The SoftBank-backed company had acquired Handa Ka Funda, TapChief, NeoStencil, PrepLadder, Mastree, CodeChef, Coursavy, Kreatryx, Wifistudy and Rheo TV. 

Most recently, Graphy, an Unacademy Group-owned company, had acquired edtech platform Spayee for $25 million.

Four months ago, Swiflearn had raised $3 million in pre-Series A round led by Stellaris Venture Partners, Venture Highway, and notable angels such as Varun Alagh, Ramakant Sharma and Alok Mittal. The startup has raised over $4 million since its inception in 2019.

In terms of the acquisition in the past couple of years, Unacademy is at par with Byju’s which has taken over 11 startups since January 2020. Meanwhile, a couple of acquisitions did not go as per Unacademy’s plan. The Munjal-led company had shut down Mastree a year after acquiring the K12 learning platform and its acquisition talks with Adda247 also fell through due to undisclosed reasons.