Edtech platform Unacademy raised fresh investment from Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group, which took its valuation to $2 billion, the company announced in a press release on Wednesday. It did not reveal the exact amount of capital it raised in the round, but TechCrunch pegged the round to be between $75 million to $100 million. In September, Softbank had invested $150 million in the edtech platform. In February, the platform had raised $110 million from General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital India and Facebook.
Unacademy began as an educational YouTube channel in 2010 by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh and Sachin Gupta. It later launched its online learning platform in 2015, that let educators create courses on various subjects, and offers content to students preparing for competitive exams.
The company said it has over 47,000 educators, teaching in over 14 Indian languages, and learners spread across 5,000 cities. Over 150,000 live classes are conducted on the platform each month and the collective watch time across platforms is over 2 billion minutes per month, it claimed.
Unacademy Group has raised a new investment round from Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group. The funding round values Unacademy Group at $2B.
— Gaurav Munjal (@gauravmunjal) November 25, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen several edtech platforms raise capital, as more people in the country turned towards online education after schools were shut in the wake of the pandemic. One of Unacademy’s biggest rivals, Byju’s has received multiple investments since the beginning of the year, and also acquired another edtech platform Whitehat Jr. for $300 million.
In recent months, WhiteHat Jr. has managed to wipe any criticism about itself off of YouTube by claiming copyright infringements. Apart from posts on YouTube, multiple people who have critiqued the company or its ads have found their posts wiped across social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter and Quora, reported Forbes India.
WhiteHat Jr. also managed to obtain gag orders from the Delhi High Court on two of its most vocal critics, Pradeep Poonia and investor Aniruddha Malpani, from from making any defamatory comments and statements against WhiteHat Jr and its employees.
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