SoftBank Group Corp. leads venture investment round in India education startup Unacademy, increasing its valuation to $ 1.45 billion as online learning increases during the coronavirus pandemic.
Investors in the $ 150 million funding include existing backers Facebook Inc. and Sequoia Capital, while SoftBank’s money comes from Vision Fund 2, a successor to its initial $ 100 billion fund. The startup’s valuation triples from $ 510 million in February.
Bangalore-based Unacademy has distinguished itself in test prep classes by hiring star teachers who help attract ambitious students who take everything from banking and public service exams to programming languages. As classrooms closed during the pandemic, demand has exploded for the startup and hundreds of other virtual learning companies in India. Byju’s, which focuses on K-12 online education, is raising funds at a valuation of more than $ 10 billion, Bloomberg News has reported.
“In a young country where only privileged urban Indians with a lot of money could reach the experts in exam preparation, Unacademy has democratized knowledge,” said Gaurav Munjal, 29-year-old co-founder of the startup.
In traditional training centers in India, students attending hundreds of people in a room often pay thousands of dollars to learn from famous teachers, usually without personal interaction. Academy typically charges $ 20 to $ 150 a month for test prep and offers classes to anyone with a smartphone.
Unacademy now has 30 million registered users and 350,000 paying subscribers, almost four times more than in February. The platform has more than 18,000 registered educators.
Munjal started Unacademy as a YouTube hobby in 2010 when he began offering Java coding lessons while still an engineering student. She became one of the most followed people on Quora for questions about computing. She founded and sold two other startups before deciding to try to turn Unacademy into a business.
With co-founders Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini, Munjal registered Unacademy as a brand in 2015 under parent company Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt. The platform offered free classes during its initial years and began a subscription model in 2019.
Today, Unacademy has videos and live class sessions, where students can consult with teachers or exchange notes with each other. Every fourth class is dedicated to answering student questions, and mock tests are scheduled every weekend. Courses range from $ 20 a month for exam preparation for state banks or Indian railways to $ 150 a month for tests to enter elite civil service jobs or engineering schools. It has expanded into pastry classes and chess tutorials.
“Good teachers whose classes were only accessible to the wealthy and well-connected are now available online to people like me,” said Siddharth Jena, a 25-year-old from a city without expert training centers who will try to pass the exam from civil service. next month.
One of them is Sharad Kothari. He spent two decades teaching organic chemistry in the classrooms of more than a hundred students in the western Indian city of Kota, a hotspot for exam prep schools to enter India’s prestigious Institute of Technology. Now with Unacademy, Kothari thinks online is a powerful medium for learning, given the ability to scale classes and introduce assistive technologies.
“Initially, I was having a hard time teaching online because there were no students in front of me, there was no power,” said Kothari, who estimates that prominent teachers earn more than $ 125,000 a year. But not anymore. “Anyone with a smartphone can enroll in my class and my reach is huge.”
Munjal said his dream was to turn his startup into a unicorn – techspeak for a valuation of $ 1 billion or more – when he was twenty years old. He will turn 30 on September 8.
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