Unacademy, founded in 2015, is an Indian ed-Tech company which was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh. Mr. Gaurav and Mr. Hemesh previously worked together at FlatChat whereas, Mr. Roman Saini, who cleared the civil services examination in 2013, quit his administrative role to join hands with other founders to start the company.
Mr. Gaurav conceptualized the idea for Unacademy. During his college days, there was a concept of Unconference. Unconference’s key elements were no specific agenda, anyone can attend, and anyone can talk about anything interesting. Similarly, Unacademy is conceptualized as a platform that is supposed to be everything that a traditional academy isn’t and more. The company caters to the learning requirements for ~35 competitive examinations, besides life goals. The company currently has 20,000 registered educators, 18 million learners, and 90,000 active paid users. The company has nearly 3000 employees. The tagline of the startup is “India’s Largest Learning Platform.”
Overview
Unacademy began as a YouTube channel in the year 2010. It began as a platform that gave free education to whoever comes across their channel. There are two categories of learning material available at Unacademy. The YouTube channel of Unacademy offers free content for different exams.
Unacademy Plus is a paid learning service provided by the startup in which the paid content works on a goal-based subscription model for which subscriptions are required with variable pricing. Many goals now also have an iconic subscription, which is an advanced subscription. The iconic subscription provides a personal coach and expert guideline. There are many discounts in the form of referral codes.
Under the paid content, students have access to live classes, doubt solving sessions, availability of recorded sessions, quizzes, etc. Courses range from $20 a month for exam preparation for government-owned banks or Indian railways to $150 a month for tests to enter civil service jobs or elite engineering schools. Unacademy concentrated on courses that need relearning, such as UPSC, JEE, etc.
The popularity of the company increased due to its free offering of content on a YouTube channel. The company brought educators to its platform to create more content for their audiences. It monetized on its viewership base at the right time. It also created an app to monetize their followership and pushed people to use the app and their website alongside the YouTube channel. Unacademy democratized content creation through its platform.
Unlike its competitors such as BYJU’s that need to invest heavily in creating attention capturing content and others that heavily invest in infrastructure and studios, the Unacademy educator’s app makes it easier for educators to record their lecture on the phone effortlessly. This feature has kept the cost of content creation and onboarding of teachers at a lower rate.
The USP of the company: it tries to target a huge market and provide quality education under one umbrella. Unacademy uses innovative and technology-oriented methods to enhance the learning experience for the students during live classes. The company runs the popular program “Legends on Unacademy.” Top personalities from diverse fields such as Indian captain Virat Kohli, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, Starbucks co-founder Zev Siegl, actress Anushka Sharma, etc., have shared their experiences related to hard work, overcoming failures, and moving forward in life.
Financials and Investors
Unacademy earned revenue of 12 Crores in FY19. The company recorded a jump of 6.6x in revenues as compared to FY18. 50% of the company’s revenue came from other income, which includes interest accrued on raised capital. Unacademy increased its talent pool during this year and spent 3.9x more on employee benefit expenses. The company has many investors, such as General Atlantic, Facebook, Nexus Ventures, and Blume ventures. Flipkart CEO K. Krishnamurthy and Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar also invested in the company.
It became a unicorn after SoftBank led funding round. The company became the second unicorn in the ed-Tech space after raising $150 million in a round of funding, valuing it at $1.45 billion. Unacademy raised fresh funding in November 2020, from Tiger Global Management and US-based Dragoneer Investment group that values the startup at $2 billion.
As per the data from Red Seer consulting and Omidyar network, India’s ed-tech ecosystem will touch $3.5 billion by 2022. The key competitors for the company are BYJU’s, Toppr, Vedantu, UpGrad.
According to a survey by YouGov, Indian startup BYJU’s is the most popular tool in India, with 65% of parents saying their children have used it. Runner-ups Unacademy and Vedantu were used by 30% of children. The Indian ed-tech space is under 1% of India’s $90 billion private education market and is predicted to bag 120% growth in FY2020 and reach $1.7 billion by the end of the year.
Also Read: Byju’s – From Offline Classes To The World’s Most Valued Edtech Startup
Marketing Strategies and Value Proposition
Unacademy has opened up the platform to various schools and colleges to conduct live classes. The company expects to earn annual recurring revenue of $300 million in the coming years. The company plans to offer offline coaching for state service examinations in Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and other states. The platform targets a total of 72 examination services in the next two years.
The company is beta testing a new product, Graphy, which enables users to explore various types of content such as books, ideas, stories, and multiple formats. To get reviews in the beta phase, its founder has shared the link to Graphy on Twitter. This offering will open a new avenue for young people to connect with the reading.
Unacademy’s 60% of ads spend on the TV, 15% on Digital, and the rest on OOH, Print Media, Radio, and Cinema. In 2019, the company launched its first ATL campaign to kick-off a 360° campaign named ‘Let’s Crack It.’ The company launched three TVCs as part of this ATL campaign. The three films portray the determination, persistence, and passion of students towards cracking an exam.
The company chose this motto to emphasize ‘let’s,’ emphasizing companies’ motto to democratize education by creating a platform for students with no differential pricing or rank-based batches. The company also launched an anthem as part of the second phase of this campaign. The company’s ad on Chauhan Sir notes also garnered a good response for the company. Unacademy has an extensive presence and reaches in student hubs like Kota. The company also uses cinema to target students in the small town. The company has seen an increase in consumers due to its campaigns, and the company plans to introduce more campaigns in the coming months.
The company was also a central sponsor for IPL 2020. During IPL 2020, the company launched a 75sec ad fil titled ‘Cracking the Game.’ The ad involving all eight franchises in the league connect sporting moments to learning concepts such as Pythagoras theorem, magnetic induction, Darwin’s theory of evolution, etc. The people liked the ad, and it clocked 2.8 million views. ~8000 retweets and 45k favorites. The company wants to focus on the fact that learning is a continuous process, and people can learn every day and from unlikely sources. Unacademy collaborated with TVF on Kota Factory. As per Unacademy, the show is a tribute to the principles that the company stands for.
These marketing strategies generate a lot of attention to the brand, increasing its customer base and revenues.
Acquisitions
The company has made various strategic acquisitions as part of its inorganic growth strategy. In 2018, the company acquired WifiStudy for $10 million. WifiStudy focuses on the preparation of public-sector exams such as SSC, banking, railway, etc. In 2020, the company acquired four companies to strengthen its offerings.
- The company acquired test preparation startup Coursavy. This acquisition strengthens the position of the startup in the UPSC examination category.
- Unacademy buys PrepLadder for $50 million in cash and stock deal. This acquisition will bolster the company’s offerings in the postgraduate medical exam preparation segment.
- Unacademy acquired Kreatryx to expand GATE and ESE preparation services by the company.
- Unacademy acquired the online competitive programming platform Codechef. This acquisition will help the company launch a coding skill vertical for school kids.
The company has also acquired a majority stake in Mastree for $5 million. This move will further boost the company’s position in the K-12 education market in India. Mastree focuses on online subscription-based services for STEAM courses for students in grades 5-8.
Such strategic acquisitions have made the company expand its product offerings, which are likely to bring more revenue in the future.
Also Read: Unschool – Redesigning The Education Ecosystem
Conclusion
The pandemic has been a game-changer moment for the Indian ed-tech industry. Since March, Unacademy has increased its active subscribers two-fold. The monthly watch time has reached an all-time high of over 1 billion minutes. As per Mr. Gaurav, the company’s revenue for April 2020 is more than the years 2017, 2018, and the first half of the 2019 combined. Technology is disrupting education in India, and Unacademy, with its motto, is democratizing education.
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