Unacademy’s valuation soars to $2 billion with latest investment from Tiger Global, Dragoneer

Less than three months after entering the unicorn club with $150 million funding, edtech startup Unacademy has raised another round from Tiger Global and Dragoneer Investment Group. The latest undisclosed investment has valued the company at $2 billion. The preceding round in September, which valued the company at $1.45 billion, was raised from SoftBank along with existing investors Sequoia and Facebook. The startup had raised $110 million from Facebook, General Atlantic, and others in February this year at a valuation of around $510 million. Back in June 2019, it had secured $50 million. Focusing on the test preparation segment, Unacademy has gradually emerged as the largest startup in the online education space following the K-12 segment focused Byju’s valued at $12 billion.

“Unacademy Group has raised a new investment round from Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group. The funding round values Unacademy Group at $2B. Happy to have both Tiger and Dragoneer onboard on our mission to build Iconic Products that democratise Education and make it more accessible and affordable,” Gaurav Munjal, Co-founder and CEO, Unacademy tweeted on Wednesday. The startup launched in 2015 has over 60 exam countries including UPSC, SSC and bank exams, railways and defence exams, and more taught by more than 47,000 educators. The startup claimed over 1.5 lakh monthly live classes.

“The Unacademy team has innovated rapidly to build a leading platform that is taking education to the farthest corners of India,” said Scott Shleifer, Partner at Tiger Global in a statement. Covid has proven to be a godsend for edtech startups with investments pouring from across corners to enable leveraging the pandemic like never before in order to reach out to more students and teachers while boosting the engagement on the apps. According to RedSeer, the total addressable markets for the two segments –higher education and lifelong learning – are likely to increase from $400 million and $100 million in FY20 to $3.6 billion and $1.2 billion respectively in FY25, according to data from RedSeer. Their combined growth is pegged at around 10X to approximately $5 billion.

Also read: Nasscom: Over 50% tech startups see revenue reaching pre-Covid level in 6 months, cash in hand improves

Importantly, the government had in July this year launched the National Education Policy 2020 focusing on ending “the fragmentation of higher education by transforming higher education institutions into large multidisciplinary universities, colleges, and HEI clusters/Knowledge Hubs, each of which will aim to have 3,000 or more students…to help build vibrant communities of scholars and peers, break down harmful silos, enable students to become well-rounded across disciplines,” as per the policy.