Why the who’s who of Indian tech invested in this edtech startup

The Unacademy founder. Photo credit: Unacademy.

Bangalore-based Unacademy, which offers online learning courses, just got US$ 4.5 million in series A funding.

Freshdesk CEO Girish Mathrubootham and Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan have bet their money on the Bangalore-based startup this time, along with Stanford Angels.

Founded by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Roman Saini, and Sachin Gupta in December last year, the startup began as a YouTube channel in 2010 and now provides short educational courses ranging from test suggestions to coaching on managing personal finances for free. To teach on the platform, potential educators must submit applications, including professional details, sample lessons, and motivation.

It currently has over 200,000 active users.

With the new round of funding, Unacademy plans to invest in adding more educators for exam preparation, language learning, and professional growth – from 200 now to 2,000 in the next year.

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Unacademy’s courses currently cater to major competitive examinations, but the team plans to have content from areas like personal finance and personality development.

“Why should knowledge sharing be only done by professors of Stanford, Harvard, or IITs? With the influx of capital, Unacademy aims to empower more educators who come on the platform to create highly engaging courses that impact millions of students. And we have just started, there is a long way to go,” CEO Gaurav Munjal said.

The fresh round of funding comes barely five months after it raised US$1 million in an investment led by Blume Ventures, along with Stanford Angels India, WaterBridge Ventures, Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Kunal Shah, Sandeep Tandon, Tashish Tulsian, and Tracxn Labs.

Before that, the company raised money from investors, including Google India’s Rajan Anandan, redBus co-founder Phanindra Sama, and TaxiForSure founder Aprameya Radhakrishna.

Seemingly growing at a breakneck pace, the startup expects its active user base to grow from 200,000 to 1 million users in 2017, and is doing 5 million video views every month.