All 9 Acquisitions By Unacademy So Far (6 of them happened in 2020!)

In 2010, Gaurav Munjal started Unacademy as a YouTube channel. Five years later, the company was officially registered as a Bengaluru-based EdTech. The startup today has a network of over 18,000 educators. It offers preparation material for several professional and educational entrance exams in the form of Live Classes both free and via subscription.

The company has secured investments through many VCs, private investors. Major names include General Atlantic, Facebook, Nexus Ventures, Blume Ventures, and Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy. As of July 2020, Unacademy valued at 1.45 billion US dollars. But the journey has not been easy. The success of Unacademy came after the pandemic boosted online education. Through constant updates in its product line, merging horizontal startups and investing to deepen its foothold in multiple streams, the company has been achieving a great breakthrough.

Thus, here are all acquisitions by Unacademy since its inception.

1. Wifistudy

In 2018, Unacademy acquired Wifistudy for $10 million. Wifistudy, the Jaipur-based YouTube-based online exam preparation and learning platform founded in 2013 by Dinesh Godara. Wifistudy focuses on preparation for competitive public-sector exams such as SSC, banking, railway, and state police.

The channel, during the days of its acquisition, had 4.5 million subscribers and 70 million monthly video views. It was one of the world's largest educational YouTube. Thus, with this acquisition, Unacademy has aimed to venture deeper into the test prep market. In many of his interactions answering the roadmap of Unacademy, he has also cited the example of WiFiStudy.

“We acquired them and learnt the insights (of YouTube). Using that, we launched many more YouTube channels. We have built a strategy where we now do more than 200 million video views a month on YouTube on core education content,” he has said to Inc42.

2. Kreatryx

Staying true to its idea of venturing into the entrance test prep market, Unacademy acquired Kreatryx. Ankit Goyal founded the startup in 2014, that Gaurav Munjal acquired the startup in March 2020. Thus, it expanded to GATE and ESE preparation services. Kreatryx has since then, continued to run as a separate brand under Unacademy Brands. Ankit Goyal joined the team and has run the brand independently while joining WifiStudy’s Dinesh Godara’s team. The acquisition would now allow Unacademy to get an edge over the competition in the GATE and ESE segment in the test prep market.

Kreatryx offers videos, test series and a postal tracking platform for GATE and ESE exams. The company’s website claims to have over 50K registered aspirants, with over 100K hours watched and more than 4 Mn questions attempted.

3. CodeChef

CodeChef came under the brand name of Directi from 2009 to 2020. In June 2020, Anup Kalbalia, Business Unit Head at CodeChef in a blog post announced that they were moving (with the team) to the Unacademy umbrella. He also had announced that Bhavin had been a Board Member of Unacademy since 2017. He will continue to remain so, and guide CodeChef jointly with Gaurav.

4. Prepladder

In July 2020, Unacademy acquired PrepLadder for $50 million. This move was aimed at strengthening Unacademy’s presence in the medical entrance examination categories such as NEET PG and FMGE. The entire 250-member team of the Prepladder joined the Unacademy Group. This also included founders Deepanshu Goyal, Vitul Goyal, and Sahil Goyal.

5. Mastree

Unacademy invested $5 million in the K12 learning platform, Mastree for a majority stake in July 2020. Mastree is building a one-stop subscription product for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) courses, for classes 5-8, which will include Live Classes in small groups for mathematics, science, public speaking, creative writing, Vedic mathematics, and others. Along with Live Classes, students can also utilise various features like doubt solving, unlimited personalised practice, Live quizzes, etc.

In the same line, it introduced 'Graphy'. It allows users to explore stories, ideas, books and original content through video, audio, images, and quizzes.

6. Coursavy

In September 2020, Unacademy acquired Coursavy to strengthen its position in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examinations category. The company will stay a separate identity under the Unacademy umbrella. Vimal Singh Rathore founded the startup in 2019. Coursavy has over 70,000 learners on its YouTube channel and platform where it hosts live online classes, resolve the doubts of UPSC aspirants, and helps with study notes, performance evaluation and feedback.

Unacademy said Coursavy’s content will aid teachers on its own platform in conducting live classes, while Rathore will act as a mentor, apart from being a teacher on the platform himself.

7. NeoStencil

In the last week of December, Unacademy has acquired NeoStencil, a test preparation platform for government jobs. Post the acquisition, CEO and Founder, Kush Beejal will continue to run NeoStencil while also finding synergies on how the two platforms can work together.

8. TapChief

Unacademy has acquired TapChief in February 2021. The online platform helps professionals to earn incomes without full-time jobs. As per the deal, Unacademy will pick up a majority stake in TapChief, ascribing it a valuation of Rs 100 crore and providing an exit to existing investors.

TapChief had raised a total of about $2.2 million from investors like Blume Ventures, Paytm, 500 Startups and angel investors like Cred founder Kunal Shah, Udhyam founder Mekin Maheshwari, and Slideshare founder Amit Ranjan. This acquisition will enable the edtech startup to build Unacademy Pro, a platform that helps you become a "Pro and get your dream job", Unacademy Group co-founder Gaurav Munjal said on Twitter.

9. Handa Ka Funda

The EdTech startup acquired Handa Ka Funda, a website that offers CAT and other MBA entrance preparations. With the acquisition, Unacademy has also appointed Ravi Handa who started the MBA entrance preparation platform.

As the company puts it, all these investments and acquisitions are in alignment with Unacademy’s aim to make education accessible and affordable to all, by working towards building the world’s biggest education platform.