Facebook invests in Indian startup Unacademy

Social media giant Facebook on Wednesday joined General Atlantic, Sequoia India and others for a fresh $110 million round of funding into one of India's fastest growing education technology start-up Unacademy.

This is the second investment by the social networking giant in India. Last year, Facebook made its first minority investment in a local startup called Meesho, a social-commerce venture empowering first-time entrepreneurs, especially women in small towns.

"We thank General Atlantic and Facebook who have joined us in this journey and our existing investors who continue to be a part of the journey by supporting us. Our goal is to democratise education and become not just the largest educational organisation but the largest consumer Internet story out of India," Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO, Unacademy, said in a statement.

Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital and Blume Ventures also participated in this round of funding, along with Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart and Sujeet Kumar, co-founder, Udaan.

"Facebook is an ally for India's economic growth and social development, and we are excited about India and its rapidly rising Internet ecosystem," said Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director, Facebook India.

"With this investment in Unacademy, we are reinforcing our commitment to the Indian startup ecosystem as well as investing in a company that is transforming learning in India," Mohan added.

The edtech start-up said that it would utilise the funding to further penetrate into the test preparation categories, launching more exam categories, acquiring top educators, and creating exceptional learning experiences for the learners through great content and product.

In addition to raising the funding, Unacademy also provided exits to some of the angel investors.

"Our goal from day one has been to democratise education and make quality education accessible to everyone. We do that by bringing the best educators and content on our platform and ensuring it is accessible to everyone across the country," Munjal said.

"We are seeing great learning outcomes through our subscription where learners can take Live classes by these educators. We now have more than 90,000 active subscribers," he added.

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Unacademy was started in 2015 as a platform for educators and learners with educators creating educational videos and offering Live interactive classes with access to more than 30 exam categories for the learners.

It now has more than 1 million videos on its platform. Currently the platform has over 10,000 educators who have created educational videos on Unacademy.

In 2019, Unacademy launched its subscription for various examinations which gives access to the learners throughout the country to top educators and structured learning.

Within a span of one year, Unacademy has more than 90,000 active subscribers with 70 per cent of its subscribers coming from tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

More than 700 educators take classes on Unacademy every day, the company said.