Indian Edtech Startup Unacademy Receives $110 Mil Funding From Facebook

On February 19, Facebook joined Sequoia India, General Atlantic, and others to invest $110 million into Indian education startup Unacademy.

This is the social networking giant’s second investment in the country. Last year, the company made its first investment in Meesho, a local startup that wishes to empower first-time entrepreneurs, particularly women coming from small towns.

In a statement, Unacademy’s co-founder and CEO, Gaurav Munjal expressed his thankfulness to Facebook, General Atlantic, and other existing investors for being a part of the journey and supporting the company. According to Munjal, what Unacademy wants to do is democratizing education and become India’s largest educational organization as well as the largest consumer Internet story.

For this round of funding, Blume Ventures, Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Flipkart’s CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, and Udaan’s co-founder Sujeet Kumar also participated.

Facebook India’s Vice President and Managing Director, Ajit Mohan, said:

The edtech start-up would use the funding to penetrate further into the categories for test preparation, launching more categories focusing on exams, acquiring top educators as well as creating great content and product to offer learners exceptional learning experiences.

Besides raising the funding, the start-up also provided some angel investors with exits.

Munjal said:

He added that Unacademy saw great learning outcomes as it now had over 90,000 active subscribers.

In 2015, Unacademy was founded as a platform for learners and educators. Educators would be creating education content through videos while offering Live interactive classes. Learners would get to access over 30 exam categories.

At the moment, the platform has over 1 million videos with more than 10,000 educators.

In 2019, a new subscription for different examinations was launched, allowing learners around the country to access structured learning and learn from top educators.

Within 1 year, the number of active subscribers of Uncademy has reached 90,000. Among them, 70% are from tier-2 as well as tier-3 cities. Every day, over 700 educators take classes on the platform.

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