Unacademy, an edu-tech startup has raised $110 million as part of its Series E fund raising exercise. Though there is a long list of investors who had participated in this round, the significant ones are Facebook and General Atlantic. Other investors include Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital and Blume Ventures. Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar too have invested.
The company has said that this round also witnessed the exit of some of the angel investors in Unacademy. The startup has been valued at $500 million for this round of funding.
Unacademy has specialized in developing education modules for helping people prepare themselves for competitive examinations. The education material is made in the form of videos and virtual classrooms.
The company has said it will utilize the funds raised now to introduce more test preparation and exam categories, acquire more educators, create better content and improve the product.
The educators on this platform numbering 10,000 who have contributed to over 1 million videos on their platform servicing over 90,000 subscribers. They are presently offering 30 exam categories. Unacademy claims more than 70% of its subscribers hail from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
The idea is to help the young aspirants to be prepared to take examinations which if they pass them will entitle them to employment. These could be government conducted examinations or by special examination bodies like the UPSC. Many banks and other organisations also conduct competitive examinations to shortlist candidates for employment.
Facebook and General Atlantic have come on board for the first time and are quite appreciative of the model Unacademy is following and believe this model democratizes education to a great extent.