SoftBank Group Corp. is leading a round of venture investment in India’s education startup Unacademy, boosting its valuation to $1.45 billion as classrooms shut during the pandemic, demand has soared for the startup and hundreds of other virtual learning companies in India.
In India’s traditional coaching centers, students who crowd hundreds to a room often pay thousands of dollars to learn from celebrity teachers, typically with no personal interaction. Unacademy usually charges $20 to $150 a month for test prep, and offers classes to anyone with a smartphone.
Gaurav Munjal with co-founders Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini, Munjal registered Unacademy as a brand in 2015 under the parent company Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt. The platform offered free classes during its initial years and started a subscription model in 2019. Unacademy now has 30 million registered users and 350,000 paying subscribers, almost four times as many as in February. The platform has more than 18,000 registered educators.
Today, Unacademy has videos and live-class sessions, where students can query teachers or exchange notes with each other. Every fourth class is dedicated to taking student questions, and mock tests are scheduled every weekend. Courses range from $20 a month for exam preparation for government-owned banks or Indian railways to $150 a month for the tests to enter civil service jobs or elite engineering schools. It’s expanded into pastry-making classes and chess tutorials.
Munjal started Unacademy as a hobby on YouTube in 2010 when he began offering Java coding lessons while still an engineering student. He became one of the most-followed people on Quora for questions about computer science. He founded and sold two other startups before deciding to try building Unacademy into a business.
The company will primarily use the proceeds to launch its much anticipated K-12 product in less than four weeks, which will see it go head-to-head with Byju’s, India’s largest edtech company. Unacademy also plans to launch more niche offerings, such as chess subscriptions and computer programming.
Sumer Juneja, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said: “We have been closely tracking Unacademy for the last 18 months and have been impressed by their growth, quality of product and consumer engagement. They are truly democratising education in India, and we look forward to helping them scale even further.”
According to Munjal, the money from SoftBank is expected to be wired in the next couple of weeks. The company has in the calendar year so far already raised an estimated $260 million and is aiming to turn cash-flow positive over the next 18 months.