SoftBank leads $150m round for India's Unacademy

SoftBank is investing via its second Vision Fund, which had raised about $108 billion as of July 2019 with support from the likes of Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs. It was joined by General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital India, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, and Facebook, all of which participated in a $110 million round earlier this year. 

Unacademy has now raised about $350 million in total, according to AVCJ Research. Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners, Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, TracxnLabs, and WestBridge Capital Partners feature among its previous investors, alongside Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar. 

Established in 2015, Unacademy offers free educational videos that help students prepare for competitive examinations and improve their ability to speak and write. The platform aims to offer more flexibility than traditional classrooms and incorporates techniques such as storytelling and mnemonics, a memorization methodology.

Unacademy claims to be the largest learning platform in India with more than 10,000 registered educators and 13 million student users. Earlier this year, the company acquired majority stakes in two industry peers, Mastree and PrepLadder. Blume is also an investor in Mastree and realized an exit in the transaction. 

“Our goal always has been to democratize knowledge and make it more affordable and accessible by getting the best experts of the world to help everyone achieve their goals," Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, said in a social media post. “It’s still day one.”

Indian education technology is booming as existing digitization drivers such as poor infrastructure in rural areas are exacerbated by COVID-19. Recent activity in this space includes a $24 million investment in online tutoring service Vedantu that extended a prior $42 million Series C round. Meanwhile, Byju’s has achieved a valuation of $8 billion following a $200 million commitment from General Atlantic.

SoftBank's’ Vision Fund program has focused strongly on logistics to date, although there is an overarching interest in various applications for artificial intelligence. The first Vision Fund launched with $100 billion in 2018 but has struggled with several high-profile bets going awry. SoftBank has said the fund will book a loss of $16.5 billion for the current financial year.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Consumer
• Expansion
• Technology
• India
• Softbank
• General Atlantic
• Sequoia Capital
• Nexus India Capital Advisors
• Blume Ventures
• Facebook
• Education