Unacademy is an Indian
educational technology company that provides
online educational platform with its headquarters in
Bangalore, Karnataka
Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...
. It prepares students for various competitive exams(like
JEE Jee may refer to:
People
* Joe Jee (1883–1919), English football player
* Joseph Jee (1819–1899), English surgeon
* Martha Jee, also known as Martha Wong (1939–), Texas politician
* Rupert Jee (born 1956), American entrepreneur and television ...
,
NEET
NEET, an acronym for "Not in Education, Employment, or Training", refers to a person who is unemployed and not receiving an education or vocational training. The classification originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1990s, and its use has ...
,
UPSC, CA,
GATE
A gate or gateway is a point of entry to or from a space enclosed by walls. The word derived from old Norse "gat" meaning road or path; But other terms include ''yett and port''. The concept originally referred to the gap or hole in the wall ...
,
UPSC NDA,
CUET,
Boards
Board or Boards may refer to:
Flat surface
* Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat
** Plank (wood)
** Cutting board
** Sounding board, of a musical instrument
* Cardboard (paper product)
* Paperboard
* Fiberboard
** Hardboard, a t ...
etc.), as well as provides content on foundational (
K-12
K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993, well known worldwide mainly for its heavyweight division fights and Grand Prix tournaments. In January 2012, K-1 Global Holdings Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong, acquired ...
) and skill building courses (
programming,
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...
,
entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
, etc.).
It was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh and
Roman Saini
Unacademy is an Indian educational technology company that provides online educational platform with its headquarters in Bangalore, Karnataka. It prepares students for various competitive exams(like JEE, NEET, UPSC, CA, GATE, UPSC NDA, CUE ...
in 2015. As of May 2022, Unacademy was valued at
USD
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
$3.44 billion.
Product and services
In February 2019, Unacademy launched its subscription-based model, Unacademy Plus. The Unacademy Plus Subscription provides students access to live courses by educators across the country in English and 14 Indian languages including
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
,
Punjabi,
Telugu
Telugu may refer to:
* Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India
*Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India
* Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language
** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode
S ...
,
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nati ...
,
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
,
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people
*Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece
See also
*
* ...
,
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
,
Gujarati
Gujarati may refer to:
* something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India
* Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat
* Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them
* Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...
, Bhojpuri, etc.
In 2020, Unacademy launched Graphy, that helps creators launch their online school in under 60 seconds. In May 2022, Unacademy opened its first offline learning centre in
Kota, Rajasthan
Kota (), previously known as ''Kotah'', is a city located in the southeast of northern Indian state of Rajasthan. It is located about south of the state capital, Jaipur, situated on the banks of Chambal River. With a population of over 1.2 mi ...
.
History
Unacademy started off as a
YouTube channel
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most v ...
created by Gaurav Munjal in 2015 when he was an engineering student in
Mumbai
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...
.
Gaurav uploaded a short video tutorial on computer graphics on his YouTube channel to help his peers prepare for the semester exams. In December 2015, Gaurav Munjal roped in two of his friends, Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini, and launched Unacademy app to create free interactive content.
By 2017, it had over 1 million learners, 5000 plus registered educators and over 40,000 classes launched. In January 2022, Unacademy became one of the founding members of
IAMAI
Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) is a not-for-profit industry body representing the interests of online and mobile value added services industry. It is registered under The Societies Registration Act, 1860.
History
The need fo ...
's India EdTech Consortium along with other
edtech
Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edtech, it often refers ...
firms like Simplilearn, UpGrad,
Byjus and
Vedantu
Vedantu is an Indian online tutoring platform launched in 2014 based in Bengaluru, India.
History
The company was launched in 2014. Its name ''Vedantu'' is derivative Sanskrit words ''Veda'' (knowledge) and ''Tantu'' (network). The organiza ...
.
Acquisitions
In 2018, Unacademy acquired WiFiStudy for $10 million, a
Jaipur
Jaipur (; Hindi Language, Hindi: ''Jayapura''), formerly Jeypore, is the List of state and union territory capitals in India, capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Rajasthan. , the city had a pop ...
-based online exam preparation and learning platform founded by Dinesh Godara in 2013. In March 2020 acquired Kreatryx, an online preparation platform for
GATE
A gate or gateway is a point of entry to or from a space enclosed by walls. The word derived from old Norse "gat" meaning road or path; But other terms include ''yett and port''. The concept originally referred to the gap or hole in the wall ...
and
ESE. In the same year, Unacademy acquired
CodeChef
Code-Chef is an online educational program and competitive programming community of global programmers. Code-Chef started as an educational initiative in 2009 by Directi, an Indian software company. In 2020, it became owned by Unacademy.
Alon ...
, an educational initiative for the programming community founded by Indian billionaire
Bhavin Turakhia
Bhavin Turakhia (born 21 December 1979) is a serial entrepreneur, and the founder of Titan, Flock, Radix, CodeChef and Zeta. In 2016, Bhavin, a billionaire, was ranked as the 95th richest person in India, with a net worth of US$1.3 billion, ...
in 2009
PrepLadder a postgraduate medical entrance exam preparation platform, in a cash and stock deal worth $50 million,
Mastree, and Coursavy, a
Union Public Service Commission
The Union Public Service Commission (ISO: ), commonly abbreviated as UPSC, is India's premier central recruitment agency for recruitment of all the Group 'A' officers under Government of India. It is responsible for appointments to and exami ...
(UPSC) test preparation platform for an undisclosed amount.
Unacademy shut down the operations at Mastree after a year of acquisition.
In 2021 Unacademy acquired TapChief, Rheo TV and Swiflearn.
Funding and Valuation
In January 2017, it received Series A funding of $4.5 million from Blume Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.
In 2019, Unacademy launched its subscription-based model, Unacademy Plus and reported an
ARR of US$30 million. In the same year, Unacademy secured nearly $87 million from investors, such as SAIF Partners,
Sequoia Capital India, SAIF Partners, Steadview Capital, Nexus Ventures and Blume Ventures.
Unacademy was the second company in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
to receive a direct investment from
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
.
In the year 2020, Unacademy achieved a
unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.
In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...
status after closing a $150m investment round with
SoftBank Vision Fund
The SoftBank Vision Fund is a venture capital fund founded in 2017 that is part of the SoftBank Group. With over $100 billion in capital, it is the world's largest technology-focused investment fund. In 2019, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was founded. T ...
at a $1.5 billion valuation. In the same year, it was named as one of the official sponsors of the
Indian Premier League
The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men's T20 franchise cricket league of India. It is annually contested by ten teams based out of seven Indian cities and three Indian states. The leagu ...
(IPL) for year 2020–22.
In November 2020, it raised a Series -G funding from
Tiger Global Management
Tiger Global Management, LLC (often referred to as Tiger Global and formerly known as Tiger Technology) is an American investment firm. It mainly focuses on Internet, software, consumer, and financial technology industries.
Background and histo ...
and
Dragoneer Investment Group
The Dragoneer Investment Group (Dragoneer) is an American investment firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm focuses on technology investments in both public and private markets globally.
Background
Dragoneer is based in San Francis ...
at a $2 billion valuation.
In January 2021, Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadview Capital and General Atlantic purchased $50 million-worth of shares from existing investors. In August 2021, Unacademy raised $440 million in a Series H funding round led by Temasek, with participation from General Atlantic, Tiger Global, and SoftBank Vision Fund, Aroa Ventures, the family office of
OYO Founder
Ritesh Agarwal
Ritesh Agarwal is an Indian former billionaire entrepreneur who is a founder and CEO of OYO Rooms.
Early years
Ritesh Agarwal was born in a Marwari family in Bissam Cuttack, Odisha, India and brought up in Titilagarh. Ritesh comes from a ...
, and
Deepinder Goyal
Zomato () is an Indian multinational restaurant aggregator and food delivery company founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008. Zomato provides information, menus and user-reviews of restaurants as well as food delivery options fro ...
, co-founder and CEO at
Zomato
Zomato () is an Indian multinational restaurant aggregator and food delivery company founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008. Zomato provides information, menus and user-reviews of restaurants as well as food delivery options fro ...
.
In September 2021 it announced
ESOPs (employee stock ownership plan) buyback programme worth $10.5 million for employees and teachers.
Activities
* During the pandemic in 2020, Unacademy opened its platform to schools and colleges to conduct Live Classes for their students.
* In the same year, the company launched its Legends on Unacademy, an initiative to bring together known personalities from different walks of life such as sports, arts, business, leadership and conducts curated lessons on their subject of expertise and life lessons. Among the personalities who delivered live lectures are
Brian Lara
Brian Charles Lara, (born 2 May 1969) is a Trinidadian former international cricketer, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest batsmen of all time. He topped the Test batting rankings on several occasions and holds several cricketing reco ...
,
Brett Lee
Brett Lee (born 8 November 1976) is an Australian former international cricketer, who played all three formats of the game. During his international career, Lee was recognised as one of the fastest bowlers in the world.
In each of his first two ...
,
Jonty Rhodes
Jonathan Neil "Jonty" Rhodes (born 27 July 1969) is a South African professional cricket commentator and former Test and One Day International cricketer. He is regarded as one of the greatest fielders of all time and was the first South African ...
,
Virat Kohli
Virat Kohli (; born 5 November 1988) is an Indian international cricketer and former captain of the India national cricket team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time, Kohli plays as a right-handed Batting (cricket), batte ...
,
Sunil Gavaskar
Sunil Manohar Gavaskar (Marathi pronunciation: uniːl ɡaːʋəskəɾ ; born 10 July 1949), is an Indian cricket commentator and former cricketer who represented India and Bombay from 1971 to 1987. Gavaskar is acknowledged as one of the grea ...
,
Sourav Ganguly
Sourav Chandidas Ganguly (; natively spelled as Gangopadhyay; born 8 July 1972), affectionately known as Dada (meaning ''"elder brother"'' in Bengali), is an Indian cricket administrator, commentator and former national cricket team captain w ...
, former diplomat
Shashi Tharoor
Shashi Tharoor (; ; born 9 March 1956 in London, England ) is an Indian former international civil servant, diplomat, bureaucrat and politician, writer and public intellectual who has been serving as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, ...
, retired IPS Officer
Kiran Bedi
Kiran Bedi (born 9 June 1949) is an Indian social activist, former-tennis player who became the first woman in India to join the officer ranks of the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1972 and was the 24th Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry from 2 ...
,
Zev Siegl
Zev Siegl (December 28, 1942) is an American keynote speaker and presenter. He co-founded Starbucks, with Gordon Bowker and Jerry Baldwin, in 1971, and served as a director of the company during its first decade.
Early life
Zev Siegl was born on ...
,
Mary Kom
Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom (born 01 March 1983) is an Indian amateur boxer, politician, and former Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. She is the only woman to win the World Amateur Boxing Championship six times, the only female boxer to ha ...
,
Randi Zuckerberg
Randi Jayne Zuckerberg (born February 28, 1982) is an American businesswoman. She is the former director of market development and spokesperson for Facebook, and a sister of the company's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Prior to working at ...
,
Abhijit Banerjee
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (; born 21 February 1961) is an Indian-American economist who is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Banerjee shared the 2019 Nobel Memorial Priz ...
,
BCCI
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the national governing body for cricket in India. Its headquarters are situated at Cricket centre, Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The BCCI is the richest governing body of cricket in the worl ...
chief
Sourav Ganguly
Sourav Chandidas Ganguly (; natively spelled as Gangopadhyay; born 8 July 1972), affectionately known as Dada (meaning ''"elder brother"'' in Bengali), is an Indian cricket administrator, commentator and former national cricket team captain w ...
,
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
co-founder
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedi ...
and
Infosys Foundation
Infosys Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in Karnataka, India, established in 1996 by Infosys to support the underprivileged sections of society. It supports programs in the areas of education, rural development, healthcare, arts a ...
chairperson
Sudha Murthy
Sudha Murty (' Kulkarni; born 19 August 1951) is an Indian educator, author and philanthropist who is chairperson of the Infosys F ...
.
* In May 2021, Unacademy launched ‘Educate India’ - an initiative supported by Feeding India, that provided free 1-year subscriptions, worth ₹19 crores to 10,000 children.
* Unacademy has signed MoUs with various state governments including the governments of
Karnataka
Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
,
Odisha
Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...
,
Telangana
Telangana (; , ) is a States and union territories of India, state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian subcontinent, Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the List of states and union territories of India b ...
,
Gujarat
Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...
,
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...
and
National Space Defense Center
The National Space Defense Center (NSDC) is a subordinate center of United States Space Command's Joint Task Force–Space Defense. It is responsible for coordinating military, intelligence, civil, and commercial space for unified space defense o ...
to support meritorious students in these states to prepare for various competitive exams like
K-12
K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993, well known worldwide mainly for its heavyweight division fights and Grand Prix tournaments. In January 2012, K-1 Global Holdings Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong, acquired ...
,
IIT-JEE
The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) is an engineering entrance assessment conducted for admission to various engineering colleges in India. It is constituted by two different examinations: the JEE-Main and the JEE-Advanced.
The Joint Seat ...
,
NEET UG, and Defence exams
* In December 2021 Unacademy had launched their Shikshodaya initiative that aims to educate over 5,00,000 girl students across India.
Criticism
In January 2020, Unacademy suffered a huge data leak that led to the exposure of personal data of nearly 22 million users. The breach included user records of employees from
Reliance Industries
Reliance Industries Limited is an Indian multinational conglomerate company, headquartered in Mumbai. It has diverse businesses including energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles. Reliance is ...
,
TCS TCS may refer to:
Organisations
* Tata Consultancy Services, an IT company headquartered in India
* Taxpayers for Common Sense, a US nonpartisan federal budget watchdog organization
* TCS Courier, a Pakistani courier service
* Touring Club Suisse ...
,
HDFC,
SBI,
Infosys
Infosys Limited is an Indian Multinational corporation, multinational information technology company that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. The company was founded in Pune and is headquartered in Ba ...
,
Cognizant
Cognizant is an American multinational information technology services and consulting company. It is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, United States. Cognizant is part of the NASDAQ-100 and trades under CTSH. It was founded as an in-hous ...
,
Wipro
Wipro Limited (formerly, Western India Palm Refined Oils Limited) is an Indian multinational corporation that provides information technology, consulting and business process services. Thierry Delaporte is serving as CEO and managing director ...
,
Accenture
Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accentur ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
and
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
, among others.
The records appeared for sale on a dark web forum, with the seller asking for $2000. Unacademy officials later confirmed that nearly 11 million accounts were compromised, but nothing valuable was leaked or misused. Unacademy re-assured the fact that no sensitive information has been compromised in their official statement on the issue.
In May 2021, it was criticized for posting questions in their Test Series that were religiously inclined and were claimed to be anti-national in nature. Learners complain that often their Educators are removed from the system, leaving the syllabus mid-way. Recently, Unacademy was under scrutiny for laying off both Educators as well as full-time employees.
Brajesh Maheshwari who is the co-founder and director of Allen Career Institute warned its teachers of leaving the institute and moving to the other offline coaching centres after Unacademy opened a coaching centre in Kota and had roped in several teachers from Allen. Unacademy also suspended contracts Of Educators to cut cost due to funding winter in July 2022.
PrepLadder
In 2021 a
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
n company Medical Joyworks filed a suit in the Bombay Civil Court alleging that PrepLadder, a subsidiary of Unacademy, has plagiarized Medical Joyworks's Prognosis application and other property.
The court in its order on 20 September 2021 stated that "Unacademy cannot use its PrepLadder app, website and any other content until all proprietary information, know-how, and technology belonging to Medical Joyworks have been removed to the satisfaction of Medical Joyworks and an independent auditor."
However, on 24 September 2021, the
Bombay High Court
The High Court of Bombay is the high court of the states of Maharashtra and Goa in India, and the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. It is seated primarily at Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), and is one of the ol ...
stayed this judgement when the legal counsel appearing for PrepLadder alleged that the civil court's order was completely erroneous since the civil judge had passed it without jurisdiction.
Awards and nominations
* 2018: TechNode Global- Resilience Awards
* 2018: IAMAI- Startup of the Year
* 2020: Named among the GSV Global EdTech 50.
* 2021: Ranked first in the LinkedIn Top Startups List for India (2021)
References
External links
* {{Official website, https://unacademy.com/
Indian educational websites
Educational websites
Educational technology companies
Education companies of India
Indian companies established in 2015
2015 establishments in Karnataka
Internet properties established in 2015
Online tutoring
Virtual learning environments
Distance education institutions based in India
Test preparation companies
Cybercrime in India