Online learning platform Unacademy on Wednesday said it has raised $150 million in a round of funding led by SoftBank Group with existing investors General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Facebook and Blume Ventures chipping in.
The latest round values the Bangalore based edu-tech startup at $1.45 billion, putting it in the list of homegrown unicorns (startups with valuations of more than $1 billion). SoftBank’s investment is through its Vision Fund 2.
The firm has so far raised around $348.5 million in over eight rounds according to market estimates.
Unacademy began as a YouTube channel of co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal back in 2010 and since then the firm has grown both organically and inorganically. Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini, are the other two co-founders of Unacademy.
Earlier in February, the firm had raised $110 million from its investors and in July it had announced the acquisition of PrepLadder and Mastree, having taken over platforms such as Kreatryx, Wifistudy and Codechef.
“Learning from the best experts to achieve a life goal has mostly been a privilege, available only to those living in the top few cities of the country. At Unacademy, we are breaking that barrier…We’re delighted to welcome SoftBank as a partner to that vision. We started with test preparation and with this partnership, we will launch other goals on our platform,” said Munjal.
Unacademy has over 18,000 educators and over 350,000 subscribers. The company prepares students for more than 35 competitive exams. The company said the documents related to the investment have been signed and the deal is expected to be closed in the next few weeks. The funding will help in the launch of products and the expansion of the team. The platform has seen a spike in its paid subscribers and watch time minutes during the lockdown period.
“We have been closely tracking Unacademy for the last 18 months and have been impressed by their growth, quality of products and consumer engagement. They are truly democratising education in India and we look forward to helping them scale up even further,” said Sumer Juneja, partner for SoftBank Investment Advisers.
Japan-based SoftBank group is among the major global investors in most Indian unicorns such as Paytm, Oyo Rooms, Ola Cabs, Delhivery, FirstCry, Lenskart and PolicyBazaar.
Sequoia Capital India, Unacademy’s another major investor, leads the list of investors in Indian unicorns as of August end with interests in eight firms.
