Unacademy: SoftBank invests $150 million; valuation triples to $1.45 billion making it second EdTech Unicorn after Byju's

Unacademy will receive $150 million in a fresh funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund. The Co-Founder, Roman Saini noted in a series of tweets- his journey to the Unicorn Club, on Wednesday.

Unacademy Group has raised $150M in a round led by Softbank valuing us at $1.45B post the funding. Great to have them onboard as a partner in our journey.

Our existing investors General Atlantic, Sequoia India, Nexus, Facebook, and Blume also participated in the round.

— Roman Saini (@RomanSaini) September 2, 2020

About the Funding

The capital infusion is yet to hit the bank. But it will push the firm's valuation to $1.45 billion, the company said. This makes it the second edtech company after Byju's into the unicorn club. Unicorns are companies whose value is $1 billion or more.

The company claims to have about 350,000 active paid subscribers. Thereby, it will primarily use the proceeds to launch its much anticipated K-12 product in less than four weeks. We will also see it launching more niche offerings, such as chess subscriptions and computer programming.

Commenting on the development, Gaurav Munjal, Co-founder stated:

"Our goal always has been to democratize knowledge and make it more affordable and accessible by getting the best experts in the world to help everyone achieve their goals. We are just getting started. It’s still Day One."

About Unacademy

In December 2010, Gaurav Munjal, a computer science student, launched a YouTube channel- Unacademy. In 2014, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh, and Sachin Gupta joined the channel as fellow educators. Come 2016, they launched the website and led its seed funding round. Later in 2017, the platform reached 500K registered users. That same year, Nexus VP and Blume Ventures invest $4.5M through series A funding.

In 2018, Unacademy acquired Wifi Study. WifiStudy was a youtube channel for preparations of exams like banking, SSC, railways, etc. Then, acquire Kreatyx, an online coaching platform for GATE and ESE. More acquisitions follow as Unacademy acquires CodeChef, a competitive programming website. It also paid $50M to acquire Prepladder, an online medical coaching platform whilst also acquiring a majority stake in Mastree for $5M.

The funding comes amid increased investor interest in the online education sector that has seen stupendous growth amid the Covid-19 pandemic.