Unacademy raises $50 million in secondary share transaction

Unacademy raises $50 million in secondary share transaction

Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadview Capital, General Atlantic have increased stake

Unacademy

KOLKATA: Online learning start-up Unacademy has concluded a secondary transaction round in which Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadview Capital and General Atlantic purchased $50 million-worth of shares and increased their stake in the company.

The latest transaction follows a round in November 2020 when Tiger Global and Dragoneer Investment Group invested in the Unacademy Group at a valuation of $2 billion.

Tiger Global has been betting on this market aggressively. Besides Unacademy, the hedge fund has invested in two rival ed-tech platforms – Byju's and Vedantu.

Bengaluru-based Unacademy made five acquisitions and raised three rounds of funding. The platform is backed by investors including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Facebook, Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures.

Unacademy Group is a learning platform with 48,000+ educators teaching in over 14 Indian languages, and leaners 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 two billion minutes per month.

 Investors are queuing up to invest in Indian edu-tech start-ups amid the pandemic-induced boom in online classes. Investments in the sector surged 300 per cent over the year ago to $2.22 billion in 2020, stated a report by the Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association and PGA Labs. Overall, India’s education market is worth $117 billion with over 360 million learners.