Facebook makes its second bet in India with investment in Unacademy

Earning its next bet in the Indian start-up space, social networking large Facebook has participated in a $one hundred ten million investment decision spherical in edtech business Unacademy.

The spherical, which was led by Typical Atlantic, also drew funding from Sequoia India, Nexus Enterprise Associates, Steadview Funds and Blume Ventures. Flipkart’s CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Udaan cofounder Sujeet Kumar also participated in the spherical, which according to resources, valued the business concerning $400-500 million.

Previous June, Facebook had invested an undisclosed sum in social commerce platform Meesho, a start-up that connects resellers with clients by means of channels this kind of as WhatsApp.

“With this investment decision in Unacademy, we are reinforcing our motivation to the Indian start-up ecosystem as perfectly as investing in a business that is transforming studying in India,” stated Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Taking care of Director, Facebook India.

With the fresh influx, Unacademy also supplied exits to some of its early-phase traders. The business had so far raised $88.five million in 6 rounds.

Launched in 2015, the Bengaluru-based mostly start-up supplies on-line classes and specialised classes to crack several aggressive exams this kind of as UPSC, CAT and JEE.

Facebook makes its second bet in India with investment in Unacademy

“Our goal from working day one has been to democratise training and make excellent training accessible to everyone. We do that by bringing the finest educators and material on our platform and making sure it is accessible to everyone across the country,” stated Gaurav Munjal, Cofounder and CEO, Unacademy. Other two founders of the business are Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh.

The business will use the funding to penetrate deeper into the check planning segment, launching extra examination categories, and attaining educators. It presently supplies entry to all around thirty examination categories for learners with extra than seven hundred educators who get lessons for 90,000 active customers.

“Unacademy was the pioneer in taking online video lessons to the masses, even just before the Jio launch. The team’s intensive emphasis on the client and currently being a pioneer in are living lessons has come to be wildly profitable. We see the biggest training business in the country currently being created at Unacademy,” stated Karthik Reddy, co-founder and Taking care of Associate at Blume Ventures, which is one of the early backers of the start-up.

This is the fourth funding the edtech space has seen this thirty day period. Previously, Byju’s, which is India’s only edtech unicorn, had obtained $two hundred million in fresh funding from Typical Atlantic. The deal valued the Bengaluru-based mostly start-up at $8.2 billion, as it changed experience-hailing business Ola as the third-biggest unicorn in the country, upcoming only to digital payments business Paytm and resort community Oyo.

Tiger International-backed are living on-line tutoring start-up Vedantu much too had last 7 days raised $24 million from a clutch of traders which includes global venture funds business GGV Funds as part of their Collection C extension spherical. Delhi-based mostly edtech start-up Classplus had also raised $2.five million from Blume Ventures and Sequoia Funds India’s Surge programme this thirty day period.