Acquisition: “upGrad acquires Unacademy”
Unacademy, the Bengaluru-based edtech platform, has been acquired by rival upGrad in an all-stock deal that values the company at ₹19.55 billion (about $206 million), Ronnie Screwvala, co-founder and chair of upGrad, told TechCrunch.
Under the transaction, Unacademy shareholders are receiving upGrad shares while angel investors were cashed out at closing. The deal closed nearly six months after it was first announced in March and includes Unacademy’s language-learning app Airlearn, which will remain under upGrad for now. Joining upGrad, which has built a larger offline education presence, was viewed by Unacademy’s leadership as a route to expand into more areas of education.
Founded in 2015 and led by co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal, Unacademy operates a portfolio of online learning businesses that includes PrepLadder and Graphy. Airlearn, the company’s language-learning product, serves about 10 million users across more than 150 countries. The group has amassed over 10 billion views for its free education videos on YouTube and employs roughly 1,000 people.
Unacademy was backed by global investors including SoftBank, Tiger Global and General Atlantic and had raised about $880 million across 13 funding rounds. The company’s peak valuation was about $3.44 billion in 2021.
The acquisition will see Unacademy retained as a brand under upGrad and is intended to help scale and broaden the combined group’s education offerings by leveraging upGrad’s offline footprint. Airlearn remains part of the transaction, and in roughly six months Munjal and Screwvala are expected to decide whether to continue building the product internally or to raise external capital; late last year Munjal had explored outside funding for Airlearn and received term sheets before talks with upGrad progressed.
“We raised at a peak, but sold at a fraction of that. I’m not going to dress these facts up,” Unacademy co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal wrote on X announcing the closing.
“To see a product coming out of India gaining traction globally is a great example of what is possible when the thinking, product and ambition are not limited by geography. India to the world is a very real opportunity, and Airlearn is already showing us a glimpse of it,” Ronnie Screwvala wrote on X.
