Unacademy Success Story: Business Model of India’s Leading EdTech Platform

Unacademy is providing an e-platform for educators and keen learners, and also bringing a revolution in the Ed-Tech industry.

We are India’s largest learning platform.

The tagline of Unacademy also represents their passion to change the way of education and bring to our nation, future kids with the best education content.

Unacademy is one of the largest online learning platforms in India. Its journey and success in the EdTech industry show how far the platform has grown, and this success continues to motivate the company to do even better for students.. Currently, it helps the Indian students to learn from the best teachers across India for free.

It’s the only ed-tech startup in India that offers quality education  without any fee. However, for advanced features like live classes and test series, it offers a Pro plan. The best part is that these paid plans are very affordable, making them accessible even for a common student.

This is the only platform where we can search for faculties or mentors according to their needs. You can learn and understand the same topic from different teachers. This makes it easier for students to understand concepts from multiple perspectives if one explanation doesn’t work for them.

With more than 50 million active learners, the platform today supports learning across 60+ exam categories, guided by 14,000+ educators.

One of the biggest advantages of its success is that it provides the most prestigious exam preparation for free, like JEE, UPSC on their platform.

Unacademy Company Overview

Point	Overview
Company Name	Unacademy
Founded	2010 (as a YouTube channel), officially launched in 2015
Founders	Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini & Hemesh Singh
Headquarters	Bengaluru, India
Industry	Ed-Tech, Online Learning
Coverage	Learners across India (20M+ registered students)
App Users	Millions of learners using both free & paid content
Key Services	Free Video Lessons, Live Classes, Test Series, Plus Subscription, Exam Preparation
Business Model	Freemium Model — Free content + Paid Subscription (Unacademy Plus)
Revenue Sources	Subscriptions, Live Classes, Test Series, Educator Partnerships
Current Valuation	$3.44 Billion
Current Status	Leading Indian Ed-Tech platform with 10M+ monthly organic traffic

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History of Unacademy: How Unacademy Started

Unacademy started as a YouTube channel in 2010. And at that time, the Youtube channel was only run by Gaurav Munjal and then shortly Hemesh Singh also joined him.

After 5 years, in 2015, Roman Saini also joined the team to launch the future ed-phoenix as Unacademy.

Among the large competition in the ed-tech companies, no one can stop them from reaching their right audience, just because of their dedication and hard work, which they are doing in making the best high-quality content for the future of our nation, for free (for the most prestigious exams).

Now, Unacademy is getting almost 10 million traffic per month organically with more than 7,000 (seven thousand) backlinks to their 177,500+ pages. (As per Ahrefs.com)

Here is the organic traffic growth chart of Unacademy since January 2017.

Top Performing Pages of Unacademy in July 2023.

Unacademy Funding Rounds

Unacademy has raised a total of $880 million across 13 funding rounds. Its biggest funding round was Series H, in which the company raised $440 million in August 2021.

Year	Round	Funding Amount	Investors
December, 2015	Seed	586K	Blume ventures, phanndara sama, Sujeet kumar, Sumit Jain, Rajat Anandan
August, 2016	Seed	$1M	Multiple Investors
January, 2013	Series A	$4.5M	Multiple Investors
September, 2017	Series B	$11.8M	Elevation Capital, Peak XV Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Venture, WaterBridge
April, 2018	Series B	$574K	Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Venture, Elevation Capital, Peak XV Partners
June, 2018	Series C	$21M	Peak XV Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Venture, Elevation Capital
March, 2019	Angel	$303K	Kalyan Krishnamurthy
June, 2019	Series D	$50.4M	Steadview, Peak XV Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Venture, Aakrit Vaish, ABG Capital, Sujeet Kumar, Elevation Capital, Gaurav Munjal, Redbrook, Roman Saini
February, 2020	Series E	$110M	General Atlantic, Facebook, Vitul Goyal, Peak XV Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Venture, Steadview, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Sujeet Kumar, Deepanshu Goyal, Sahil Goyal
September, 2020	Series F	$153M	SoftBank Vision Fund, Peak XV Partners, Facebook, Blume Venture, General Atlantic, Nexus Venture Partners, IIFL Finance
November, 2020	Series F	$86.3M	Tiger Global Management, Dragoneer Investment Group, India Internet Fund, DF International Group, SoftBank Vision Fund, General Atlantic, Steadview, Peak XV Partners
February, 2021	Angel	–	Sachin Tendulkar
August, 2021	Series H	$440M	Temasek, Mirae Asset, General Atlantic, SoftBank Vision Fund, Tiger Global Management, Ritesh Agarwal, Deepinder Goyal, Dragoneer Investment Group

Source

Unacademy entered the unicorn club in September 2020 after raising $150 million in a funding round led by SoftBank. This funding valued the ed-tech platform at $1.45 billion and made Unacademy the second ed-tech unicorn in India, after Byju’s.

Acquisition By Unacademy

Here’s the list of all startups the ed-tech company has acquired to date.

• Wifistudy (2018, acquired for $10 million)
• Kreatryx (2020)
• CodeChef (2020)
• Prepladder (2020, acquired for $50 million)
• Mastree (2020)
• Coursavy (2020)
• NeoStencil (2020)
• TapChief (2021)
• Handa Ka Funda (2021)
• Rheo TV (2021)
• Spayee (2021)
• Swiflearn (2021)
• GATE Academy (2022)

Services Offered By Unacademy

Unacademy platform offers many services:

• The platform offers both live and pre- recorded classes from India’s best educators.

• Students get access to daily live classes, practice sessions, mock tests, test series, and other study materials in PDF format for various competitive exams. 

• Learners can get wide variety of exam preparation video courses. Here’s a list

1.  SSC and Bank Exams Preparation
2. Railway Exams Preparations
3. Defence Exams Preparations
4. JEE And NEET Entrance Exam Preparation
5. State PSC(Public Service Commission) Exam Preparation
6. NET Exam
7. GATE ESE and IIT-Jam Entrance Exam Preparation
8. NEET PG Entrance Exam
9. TET(Teacher Eligibility Test) Exam
10. Management and Foreign Studies
11. CA and CS Entrance Exam, as well as regular studies
12. CBSE (Class 10 – 12)
13. Personality Development

Products/ Apps Offered By Unacademy

Unacademy has also launched many products like

• Learner app: It’s the main platform that prepares students for various competitive exams. The app offers access to live classes, mock tests, quizzes, and more.

• Educator app: This platform was specially launched for educators and enables them to connect with learners and share their knowledge, tips, study material, and schedule classes. The educator can also monitor their daily progress through this app.

• Parent app: Through Unacademy’s parent app, the parents can track their child’s performance. They can check the overall progress summary, monitor their daily watch time, and check their child’s test results. 

• NextLevel App: NextLevel is a job search app by Unacademy. The app helps find people jobs as per their preferences and connects them with peers and recruiters.

• Graphy: Graphy is an online course platform launched by Unacademy. It allows creators and educators to grow their online brands and businesses by creating and selling their own courses, without any prior coding knowledge.

Other Popular Apps by Unacademy:

• UnacademyX: For NEET and UPSC prep
• Unacademy IAS
• Unacademy Languages

Unacademy Business Model: How Unacademy Earns?

Unacademy operates in both B2B and B2C segments. Its primary source of income is paid subscriptions, and it follows the Freemium Business model.

Most of its learning content is available for free, including YouTube videos and recorded lectures on its platform. Students can even watch many videos without signing up.

If you want to get mentorship from some specific teacher/faculty, you have to join their plus program, in which you’ll get Live classes and doubt sessions, live faculty interaction, test series and mocks that’ll be helpful in enhancing your knowledge on each subject.

Unacademy also supports its educators by paying them based on video views and engagement. This creates a strong learning ecosystem where students get quality education, and teachers get rewarded for their content.

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Unacademy Revenue Model: How Unacademy Earns?

1. Through Paid Subscriptions

Unacademy mainly earns through paid subscriptions. While basic content is free, students pay a monthly or yearly fee to access premium features like live classes, doubt-clearing sessions, test series, mock exams, and personalised guidance.

2. Through Exam Specific Courses/Test Series

For competitive exams like JEE, UPSC, SSC, Banking, Railways, and others, Unacademy offers focused preparation programs that come at an additional cost.

3. Through Partnerships

Unacademy also earns through partnerships with schools, colleges, and other educational institutions. These collaborations help the platform offer certification courses, expand its reach, and build more trust in its learning programs.

4. Through YouTube Channels

Unacademy has launched 50 new educational channels on YouTube, catering to diverse subjects under names like Unacademy NEET, Unacademy UPSC and many others. They also offer YouTube channels, as per class-wise, for school students.

5. Through Unacademy Store (Offline Learning Platforms)

The ed-tech company launched its first offline learning centre in May 2022, in Kota, Rajasthan. It plans to open other centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, etc. The main aim of setting this up was to establish a physical presence and offer top educators high-quality study materials, and in-person mentorship to all learners.

Competitors of Unacademy

• BYJU’s
• Khan Academy
• Vedantu
• PhysicWallah
• Toppr
• Blueprint Firefly
• TutorVista

More about Unacademy

1. If you want to become an educator at Unacademy and help the students with your teaching skills, download the Unacademy Educator App Now.

2. A Most popular Web Series Sponsored by Unacademy, Kota Factory

3. Most popular ad of Unacademy on Television show. A boy not able to get Chauhan Sir notes but finally he get his all educational material on Unacademy.

4. Also, check their trending anthem for the students…
Let’s Crack Anthem.

If you found something that also included in it, please contact with us at hello[@]aryanjalan[.]in

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