India is evolving and the citizens are very proud and happy about it. It is not every day you get to see your country’s name being taken as an example of innovation and a rising economy. I might be wrong and India has always been the shining example of growth and the world is taking notes to apply that to their nation. Business Outreach Magazine sits at a wonderful place, where we get to see and share stories about industries and new technologies.
The recent times allowed society to embrace advancements in approach with the application of fresh ideas and development in the tech sector. We have been introduced with factors like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Fintech, Edtech, Ecommerce, and several others. Society has understood that the way forward is the way to go and to expect wonders in science with its discoveries. The internet has opened many doors to globalization.
Businesses and startups now have access to explore different markets and reach out to venture capital firms for funding. In India, the edtech industry has had significant growth of about 39.77% CAGR during the last few years. In the year 2020, the edtech industry was at a valuation of about $ 750 million. With unprecedented growth, it is likely to reach a $ 4 billion worth industry by the year 2025. Now this is magnificent, when considering the scalability of a segment. Some of the reasons for this progress arised from the need to access non-academic study modules from cities in tier 2 and 3 category. The market also pointed towards a requirement for personalization in the academic approach, since the traditional methods were a more standardized format. But each student has different ways of consuming knowledge and with the rise of edtech, the way of delivering education is getting more improvised.
It is estimated that out of $ 4 billion valuation, about $ 1.5 billion will be invested in foundational learning courses for K-12 grade, which is Kindergarten to Class 12. In the year 2020, the startups from the edtech sector raised about $ 1.43 billion in funding. During this year, time redirected the entire education system to apply for a move with the support of technology and online classes. Parents and educational institutions adapted the approach and appreciated its flexibility. The results showed that edtech was the sector getting most funding from investors due to the positive impact it delivered towards society.
Companies like Byju’s secured about 57% of the capital followed by Unacademy and Vedantu with 10.5% and 9.5% respectively. Now, Byju’s is valued at about $ 10 billion which makes it a decacorn company. Unacademy, Eruditus, upGrad, Vedantu, Physics Wallah, LEAD are a few on the list of ed-tech startups in India getting unicorn status. The hard work, resilience, and proper planning have brought these companies to the forefront of the industry and ultimately gained success. The road has been very tough, with several hurdles and challenges. But the success stories of these companies surely motivate us to move forward with our goals and dreams.
The edtech companies have started to prepare modules in a way that students can connect with the lessons with games and puzzles. Gamification techniques have proved beneficial in retaining students’ attention and they have found the courses to be fun and interactive. Companies like Byju’s, Playablo, Toppr and several others used this method to provide better clarity on any concepts. With the similar mindset of gamification, companies like Kiddopia, Enguru, Kutuki Kids Learning and many others used the application of video and kids music in lesson plans. Surveys suggest that 70% of the learners have accepted positively to interactive learning modules with games and videos more than the traditional ways of learning.
Online classes have shown its potential to deliver seamless education among learners. The edtech company Byju’s is recently trying to develop a method to offer offline classes in several cities by opening ‘Byju’s Learning Center’. This hybrid strategy ensures enough flexibility from the company towards a market which is expected to witness more growth in the following years.
What is the reason behind the growth of the Edtech Industry in India?
The modern era has shown the public the uses of technology. In the year 2020, a report indicates that there are about 622 million people who are active on the internet in India. This data will rise about 45% by the year 2025, when there will be about 900 million people actively using the internet. The rural areas in India are quickly accepting the need to use the internet for their daily purposes and two people out of five are already on the internet. Things are not too different in urban India, where about 67% of the population uses the internet. An education report from the year 2020, shows that the families of students studying in government school owning a smartphone increased from 30% to 56% in a period of just 2 years from 2018 to 2020. Similarly, about 50% of the students studying in private schools owned a smartphone which increased to about 74%.
The edtech segment has also received support from the government to build the young learners of India to be an example of academic excellence. The infrastructure provided by the Indian government will also portray vocational training to students for making them proficient in practical approach. The use of regional languages are encouraged by the government to make education more acceptable by the communities and are advised to create content more based on local and regional languages. The K-12 grades have attracted interest in the edtech startups and there has been enormous growth in this segment.
An analytics company, Tracxn, states that in the year 2021, edtech firms in India gathered about $ 5.77 billion in funding. Out of this amount, K-12 educators raised about $ 99 million in capital. There have been about 1,782 edtech startups in India from the year 2018. Based on a subscription module, these edtech startups have collaborated on planning courses in a way that students get some value out of it. Technologies like Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence have provided the necessary resources for learning to be effective and efficient. The future of the edtech industry in India is bright and the government is supporting the initiative with tools and relevant policies to make the parents and students accept remote learning as a key part of gaining more knowledge.
What is Educational Technology or the commonly used term ‘EdTech’ ?
Educational Technology is the application of computer hardware and software along with theories and practices of education which will encourage the process of learning. The companies that support the building of such technologies of education are often termed as ‘edtech companies’. Educational technology is a combination of practical experience and theoretical knowledge from various factors like artificial intelligence, communicational practices, aspects of sociology, psychological factors and principles of computer science. The domains included under educational technology are vast and include learning theory, training that are computer-driven, mobile learning and learning through online platforms.
The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) mentions educational technology to be the ethical practice and studying of the facilitation of learning and increasing efficiency by performing the improved creation, usage and management of proper resources and processes of technology. It relates to the fact that instructional technology is the result of the theory and action of improved design, proper management and well planned evaluation of several processes which leads to learning. Thus, educational technology has similarities to any valid and relevant education sciences, where equipment and methods are obtained from scientific research. With the concept of educational technology, the idea is to integrate technology into the spheres of education that may bring out a positive outcome towards diverse circumstances for students to learn facts and information.
The usage of education technology or edtech has its branches like:
- Theoretical and practical methods of learning.
- Tools and media resources like online courses, empowering interaction between the student and the learning approaches and encouraging further development.
- In a learning management system or LMS and education management information system or EMIS, where performances of students can be identified and evaluated for a better outcome.
- Application in a training management system for keeping records on logistics and project budget.
- Learning Record Store or LRS, for analyzing and storing data for further research.
Educational Technology is a term that is inclusive in nature where it supports tools, theory and the entire foundational process to facilitate learning along with teaching. It is the joint production from blended, online and traditional learning. A technologist in the field of education is trained with the practices of edtech who intends to analyze a subject by implementing and developing a design to enhance the aspects of learning. The limitless extent of educational technology comes with multimedia learning, computer-driven methodologies, computer-generated instructions, internet based training (IBT), collaborating digital educational, distributed learning, multi-modal instruction, cyber-focused learning, personal training, virtual learning environments or VLE, m-learning and many more.
Virtual Learning and Smart Learning
With more practices on educational technology, the exact definition of the terminological aspect has blended with the general understanding of educational technology. An example of virtual learning can be taken into account, where it was considered as a virtually simulated situation and people were treated for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, virtual education methods can be connected with any strategies, where learning is delivered with the help of the internet. The term ‘virtual’ is accepted in a broader perspective of imparting education through an alternate mode that can be related with ‘virtual’ considered classrooms. Students in this setup will not require to visit a physical classroom for seeking education, but can have the flexibility to attend classes with the help of a smartphone or a computing device with the internet.
Virtual learning has a resemblance with distance education, where the content of the course is delivered in different methods like applications for course management, multimedia tools and undergoing a conference over a video call. With the shared collaboration of virtually delivered education and simulated education practices, students get introduced to the interactive nature of a classroom that are related with authentic situations. Several contexts of education are already present around a student, who is not conscious of its presence. The mixture of adaptive learning with the use of individualized education resources, interface and tools, allows the individual to gain differentiated instruction, with exposure to several opportunities for learning in various places and at different times, which are often added to as ‘smart learning’.
Best Edtech Companies in India : Pillars And History of Educational Technology
1. BYJU’s
Byju’s is an educational technology company in India that is headquartered in the city of Bangalore. The company was established in the year 2011, by Byju Raveendran and his co-founder, Divya Gokulnath. In March 2022, it was recorded that Byju’s had about 115 million students registered to the platform and is valued at about $ 22 billion. Byju’s application was developed in the year 2011, by a company called Think and Learn Private Ltd, which was formed by Byju Raveendran, Divya Gokulnath and a bunch of students. Byju was an engineer by profession who also taught mathematics to students since the year 2006. For the first few years, Byju’s offered lesson modules in the form of a video-focused online delivery program for the Kindergarten to Class 12 students and for aspirants studying for competitive exams.
In the year 2012, the educational technology company got listed in the Deloitte Technology under the category of Fast 50 in India and also as the Fast 500 in the region of Asia Pacific. The firm has been present in the list till the present time, which is an impeccable standing. In the month of August in 2015, the company launched ‘Byju’s: The Learning App’. In the year 2017, the company launched Byju’s App for Mathematics for kids and the company’s app for connecting with parents.
The year 2018 marked Byju’s with 15 million registered users and out of them 900,000 were paying the subscription at that time. It is in the year 2018, that Byju’s became the first edtech company in India to acquire unicorn status. A report shows that by the year 2019, about 60% of the students registered in Byju’s were from regions in the rural areas of India and from non-metropolitan cities. In the month of January in 2022, Byju’s collaborated with other edtech companies like upGrad, Unacademy, Simplilearn and also Vedantu to establish the India Edtech Consortium by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). The company signed a deal with Qatar Investment Authority to build an all new educational technology company along with a research and development wing based in Doha.
Byju’s is an online learning platform that follows the freemium plan. Here, any user who registers with the app gets free access to all the content for about 15 days after registration. After that a subscription fee is charged to continue the learning on the platform. In 2015, in the month of August, Byju’s provided educational material for students between the class 4 to 12. In 2019, the company launched an early education module for students from class 1 to 3. The edtech company also helps students prepare for exams in India like, IIT-JEE, CAT, IAS and many more. It also provides mentoring and coaching for aspirants looking to excel in GRE and GMAT.
Subjects in academics along with its concepts are explained in a digitally prepared animated video that has a duration of about 12 to 20 minutes. These videos can be understood by the students at their own pace. The company states that it has about 40 million people using the app and out of them about 3 million paid for the company’s subscription model. The annual rate of retention for Byju’s is about 85%. In 2019, Byju’s gave focus on creating educational content in regional and local dialects. It also developed an app directed towards international users, who have English as their first language. The Early Learning App also opened the door to Kindergarten students for interactive videos.
The company announced in April, 2021 that it will launch ‘Byju’s Future School’ which will bring forward a new method of modern education with technologies and innovative approaches. The school will aim to transform learning from online to offline classes and thus providing more interaction with the teachers and students. Subjects like Coding along with Math, Science, Music, English and Fine Arts will be delivered with the power of storytelling. Byju’s plans to launch the school in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil and several others. The objective to open 500 offline tuition centers in India has already started and in February 2022, it was seen that 80 tuition centers have started operations.
Acquisitions by Byju’s
In the month of July in 2017, Think and Learn took over TutorVista from the British multinational enterprise, Pearson. In the year 2019, Byju’s further expanded by buying Osmo for about $ 120 million, which is an American company that develops education-focused games for children between the age 3 to 8 years. After that Byju’s acquired WhiteHat Jr for about $ 300 million. A startup creating a virtual simulation for lab, called LabInApp was bought by Byju’s in September of 2020, followed by a company based in Mumbai, called Scholr. In February of 2021, Scholr which is a platform for clearing doubts was acquired by the edtech unicorn and led to more expansion. In April of 2021, the company also bought the test preparation company Aakash Educational Services at about $ 950 million in cash and also in stocks. After the deal, the founders of Aakash and the investment firm, Blackstone Group will keep small amount stakes in Byju’s, which was one of the propositions in the deal. Byju’s bought ‘Epic’ at a price of $ 500 million, both in the form of cash and stocks. Epic was an American based company which was an education platform for kids.
With the acquisition of Epic, Byju’s entered the global market where it expected an annual revenue of about $ 300 million. The venture for Byju’s was to take over the Singapore-based online platform for higher education named ‘Great Learning’ at a cost of $ 600 million. This was followed by acquiring an after school app for learning called ‘Toppr’. These acquisitions were followed by the purchase of two startups, one is Gradeup, which was renamed as Byju’s Exam Prep and the other is a startup from America called ‘Tynker’ for about $ 200 million. Tyler is a platform that focuses on coding. Furthermore, Byju’s acquired another company called ‘GeoGebra’ for $ 200 million in forms of cash and stock.
Funding for Byju’s
Byju’s secured a seed funding in 2013 from Aarin Capital. By the year 2019, the company gathered funding of about $ 785 million from eminent investors like Sequoia Capital, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Qatar Investment Authority, Lightspeed Venture, Tencent and several other firms. Byju’s was the first enterprise in the whole of Asia to receive funding support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. A file submitted at the Ministry of Corporate Affairs states that Byju’s became a unicorn in the year 2018 and was valued at $ 1 billion. The success of the company attained great heights as it became a decacorn in 2020 in the month of June as it received a capital from Mary Seeker’s Bond Investment Group. In the month of March in 2022, Byju’s reached a valuation of $ 22 billion after raising an additional funding of $ 800 billion.
In 2022, Byju’s took the place of OPPO in sponsoring the Indian National Cricket Team. While working on a premium subscription model, Byju’s gathered a revenue of about ₹ 260 crore in the year 2017. The revenue doubled in 2018 to about ₹ 520 crore. In November of 2020, Byju’s became the sponsor of Kerala Blasters FC from the Indian Super League, which was earlier handled by Muthoot Finance. The company also raised about $ 200 million from BlackRock and T. Rowe Price Group and secured a valuation of $ 12 billion. In the month of March in 2021, Byju’s raised a Series F funding of $ 460 million followed by investment firms like B Capital, Baron Funds and a few others giving another $ 1 billion to the company. In the same year, Edelweiss Group, XN Exponent Holdings, Market X Ventures gave about $ 460 million to Byju’s as another level of funding. Byju’s is one of the official sponsors of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Byju’s launched the ‘Education for All’ initiative where they collected unused and refurbished smartphones and loaded them with the company’s premium content, which were delivered to students who have no access to an online platform.
2. Unacademy
Unacademy is an Indian edtech company founded in the year 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Dr. Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh. The company is headquartered in Bengaluru in the state of Karnataka. With the rise of advanced technology in education, the edtech industry has offered so many prospects for students to embark on a journey to explore new paths of learning. The internet has brought the power of data and global resources at our fingertips with the help of smartphones. Unacademy seems to hold a huge portion of the edtech revolution in India, where it has come with modules for students who want to excel in competitive exams like CAT, JEE, IBPS, RRB and several others along with video focused lessons on different subjects.
In the later half of 2015, Unacademy registered itself as an education technology company in Bengaluru. In the month of September in 2020, Unacademy achieved unicorn status after it received funding of about $ 150 million from investment firms like Softbank and others. Unacademy is under the parent company Sorting Hat Technologies Private Limited. In 2021, the edtech company had a funding of about $ 838.5 million and an annual revenue of $ 464.53 million. The company provides educational lectures and lessons through videos. Unacademy started as a Youtube channel in the year 2010, but got launched officially as an edtech company in 2015. The growth has been impressive since its inception.
Unacademy has about 10,000 teachers and mentors on the platform and about 13 million users registered on the platform. Hemesh Singh, who is the co-founder and CTO of Unacademy is proud when he says that the company has about 750,000 subscribers who pay for their modules and have a wonderful retention rate of the students. By April of 2022, Gaurav Munjal shared that their subscribers had crossed the 800,000 mark. In 2021 during the month of September, Unacademy had about 650,000 subscribers. This sort of growth is definitely a matter of immense praise and accomplishment.
Unacademy, with its different branches like Unacademy JEE, Chamomile Tea with Toppers, Wifistudy, Unacademy Studios and The Solutionists, brings a view count of about 110 million and thus makes it one of the largest educational sharers of content. The app provided by the company for learning is compatible across all platforms like iOS, Android Operating System and Windows. There are three products offered by Unacademy, which are, App for Learners, App for Educators and App for Parents. The edtech company shares content from the best mentors through four mediums, namely, a well-structured syllabus, day to day live classes, sessions for clearing queries and doubts and opportunities for undergoing tests and practice lessons.
The market for K-12 or the Kindergarten to class 12 made an overall valuation of about $ 1.16 billion. In this segment, the development for skills segment had a valuation of $ 500 million. In the year 2020, the edtech industry in India was valued at $ 2.8 billion. But estimates suggest that by 2025, this market in the education technology industry will be valued at about $ 10.4 billion.
Gaurav Munjal, who is Unacademy’s CEO, had sold FlatChat to a company called CommonFloor in 2014. FlatChat was Gaurav’s first company and he shifted his energy towards Unacademy. GauravMunjal studied Bachelors of Technology in the field of Computer Engineering from NMIMS which is located in Mumbai. He pursued a short internship at Directi as a Software Developer, a time when he started Unacademy on Youtube, where he shared educational contents that are easy to consume for every student. Gaurav founded FlatChat after he left Directi. But after FlatChat’s acquisition, Unacademy was formed with years of planning and chalkboard strategies. Dr. Roman Saini is a doctor AIIMS and was also successful in clearing the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) exam in 2013. He left his position in IAS and became a co-founder and the chief mentor of Unacademy.
Hemesh Singh is the Chief Technology Officer or CTO of Unacademy. He was also FlatChat’s former CTO. With the Partner program, Karan Shroff has been promoted as a partner of the company in 2021 during the month of September. Karan was the CMO of Unacademy and is a recognized leader in the edtech firm. The partnership position shares equal values of a co-founder as said by Gaurav Munjal. After being promoted for his hard work, Karan praises such a company culture that promotes diversity and inclusiveness among the employees. Such methods of a workplace will allow a sustainable and united growth of Unacademy that will drive towards further scalability.
Currently, the educational technology company has about 5,000 employees with a market valuation of $ 3.44 billion. To build a community of self-educated seekers of knowledge with the admiration for technology is the prime objective of Unacademy.
Shareholdings for Unacademy
Prominent investment firms like Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners are the shareholders with the most stakes in Unacademy. Each of the venture capital firms holds about 13.1% of shares of the company. Unacademy has about 14.4% stakes for the employee pool. There are stakes secured by other investment firms like Softbank, General Atlantic and several others. Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh as founders acquired about 9% stakes in the edtech company.
The name and meaning of Unacademy states that it is not like other Institutions that follow the traditional ways of imparting education. The company has made their content easily accessible and states a tagline that it is one of the largest platforms for learning in India. Unacademy has an aim to develop course content in different regional languages. The edtech company desires to join educators with the students to develop a learning environment, where ideas and conversation will be exchanged for the greater good.
Statistics indicate that India’s young population accounts for about 19% of the world’s youth and to bring forward the talent from our country to the world is a noble deed. In India, about 70% of the students or young learners are from tier 3 cities, where there is a demand for quality educators and mentors. This brings the edtech company to create learning modules in local languages and focus to increase the number of teachers and bring in more exams in their course contents to better serve the users.
Unacademy organizes a space called ‘Legends on Unacademy’, where top educators from around the world share life lessons and motivational speeches. In their first episode, renowned cricketers Brain Lara, Brett Lee and Jonty Rhodes came as mentors to discuss the challenges and accomplishments they faced in their careers. In their second edition, the Congress Minister, Shashi Tharoor, India’s first woman IPS Officer, Madam officer Kiran Bedi, and the celebrity couple Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma were invited to share their life experiences on the platform. All the educators in Unacademy are proficient at their crafts and impart a high level of value to the platform. Unacademy has plans to bring in celebrity mentors and teachers from around the world in their ‘Unacademy Icons’ series, where learners will be taught extra curricular activities. This sort of strategy shares the likes of Artium Academy, Celebrity School and several others.
Unacademy has grown as one of the successful and top educational technology companies in India. The edtech startup has secured a large amount of capital from various series of funding from different investment firms in the world. Over the years, the company has acquired about 12 other ventures like CodeChef, Coursavy and many more. Unacademy is the second most valued edtech startup in India. The success behind Unacademy is the result of their students who give their mind and soul to the modules and pass some of the most difficult competitive exams.
As of now, the edtech platform has course structures for about 32 competitive exams and they aim to further grow and scale by adding more steps of evaluation and exams to extend interest in their platform for more subscribers. After raising about $ 110 million in funding from General Atlantic and Meta, Unacademy has boosted their valuation to a great extent. The company already had a net worth of $ 510 million from firms like Sequoia Capital, Steadview when they started their journey.
Some of the other venture capital firms that have supported Unacademy are SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment, Tiger Global Management, Temasek, who have been there with the edtech platform for a long time. Unacademy has also partnered with former Indian Cricket team Captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni in a contract for a series of video promotions. Unacademy expects more users to get registered into their platform with the upcoming campaigns.
Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal announced in the month of May in 2022, that the company will start to launch learning centers around the country, starting with the city of Kota in Rajasthan. The edtech platform will also initiate scholarship opportunities to students to support their education. Admission tests will be conducted to bring in more students into the platform and create a community of curious and excited learners. Cities like Jaipur, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Delhi NCR, Pune, Ahmedabad and many more are on the list to get Unacademy learning centers.
Unacademy is eyeing to attract about 15,000 new students with foundation modules and for exams like NEET, JEE and many more. The company has recently hired about 30 new teachers in the Kota learning center and are hoping to draw interest for potential new students from around the city. Kota now has about two Unacademy Learning Centers. These centers will follow a hybrid model of sharing lessons where offline classes will commence on some days of the week.
An 18,000sq.ft space has been arranged for the first learning center, where educators will conduct their classes and learning contents for class 9 and 10 will be given along with NEET-UG, JEE.
Some of the accomplishments Unacademy has gained over the years are:
- The edtech startup has course modules for more than 60 competitive examinations.
- There are about 5,00,000 mentors and educators registered with the company.
- More than 1 million video content on lessons are provided by Unacademy.
- The Youtube channel of Unacademy has more than 350 million views.
- Unacademy has opened physical learning centers in Delhi, Kota, Lucknow and many others.
The revenue reports presented by the edtech company indicate that in the financial year of 2021, total losses incurred was about ₹ 1,537.4 crore, which was about ₹ 258.6 crore in the year 2020. The numbers gave an increase of about 494% in the year 2021. The expense of the company increased to about 349% in the same year. On the other hand, the revenue of the company increased to about 350% in 2021. In the year 2020, Unacademy earned ₹ 64.7 crore which jumped up to ₹ 464.53 crore in the year 2021.
The Partnerships of Unacademy
Unacademy signed a Memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Backward Classes Welfare Department (BCWD) situated under the Government of Telangana. Under this agreement, Unacademy will curate students with merit and willingness for knowledge and provide them scholarships to study. The edtech platform will organize three steps of evaluation through exams that will ensure the aptitude of the students. These exams will have a similar format of the competitive exams to ensure most results. The scholarships will be provided to about 4,500 students who will get access to the premium subscription package of Unacademy. This news was announced in the month of April in 2022. The MoU will also be collaborated with the Government of Odisha with the same details of agreement.
Unacademy, led by Gaurav Munjal, was also the official Indian Premier League partner for about 3 seasons of the cricket carnival program. Along with this, the edtech company also collaborated with TapChief in the year 2017, where Unacademy provided assistance to students in getting their first job and entering the professional phase of their lives.
In the month of May in 2022, Unacademy started a new initiative named, ‘Meri Pehli Academy’ that celebrates the resilience of women on ‘Mothers Day’. The company, after collaborating with former Indian Cricket Team Captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, released about 85 featured videos. Earlier, the edtech company also joined hands with the Master Blaster, Sachin Tendulkar, where the campaign for advertising portrayed Sachin’s success and hurdles in his professional career. In the Indian Premier League, Unacademy had campaigns like ‘Mauke Pe Chauka’, ‘Kya Hum Live Hai’ and several others. In the year 2019, the edtech platform initiated the ‘Let’s Crack It’ campaign in ATL.
Unacademy is currently valued at $ 3.44 billion, after the startup gathered a Series H capital of $ 440 million from Temasek, Tiger Global and some others. The company acquired an online platform of full stack named Swiflearn in November of 2021. Swiflearn is a company based in Gurugram and provides academic course content that can be personalized according to each student. The company’s founders Abhinav Agarwal and Anand Bakode built Swiflearn, where the K-12 division was mainly focused and free and paid subscriptions were both offered in services. The deal was worth about $ 15 million to $ 20 million and Swiflearn joined the Unacademy team. CodeChef was a prime acquisition by Unacademy which gathered interest from both Gaurav Munjal and Bhavin Turakhia.
Roman Saini, the co-founder of Unacademy announced that the ESOP buyback strategy was the third largest in the industry of edtech. He appreciated the employees for trusting the company and also said that Teachers Stock Options or TSOPs will be provided to the educators of Unacademy. Under TSOPs, teachers who have worked for 3, 4 and 5 years will have eligibility for complete stock grants that are vested. Gaurav Munjal also said that about 300 teachers in Unacademy are already eligible and a sum of about $40 million will be granted to the teachers in the upcoming years.
Unacademy works on a B2B and Business to Consumer strategy, where the most revenue comes from paid subscriptions of the company. The Unacademy Plus model has a lot of videos that have been recorded earlier along with several classes. This amount of content is free for the users. For clearing queries, students have the option, where they have to pay for a one to one conversation with an educator. The premium package offers this service to the students. The Relevel online space was launched in the year 2021in the month of May.
With the help of Relevel, users applying to this service can find jobs within a few days. The initiative has about 2.35 lakh individuals and claims a 100% placement rate in October of 2021. The job seekers who have succeeded in getting a job are mostly from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
A more experienced working professional gets about 150% hike in their pay cheques, when they use the portal. There are more than 64 companies who have partnered with Relevel and the portal takes several tests to interview potential candidates in the sectors of Frontend Developer, Backend Developers and Business Development. The tests include sections like MCQs, Algorithms, Case Review and Study and happen in a day. There are times the portal will ask candidates to develop a small app and then follows an interview. It is headed by Shashank Murali. Graphy is another source of Unacademy, which helps creators to grow their audience strength. The platform also helps the creators to commercialize their content and host live sessions and many more features.
The Graphy platform was updated as a SaaS space, where creators from all domains are welcomed into it. Unacademy also shares and uploads content on Youtube across different types of its channels like Unacademy JEE, Unacademy UPSC and many more. There are also channels of the company which provide content for students between the class 6 to 8. The marketing team of Unacademy has a strong approach when promoting the company through social media and advertisements.
3. Vedantu
Vedantu is a successful edtech startup in India that has provided its own unique approach to provide evolutionary learning methods to cope with the rising demand of the modern times. The platform offers live sessions for tutoring with the support of a proficient mentor. The classes are ensured to come out as interesting and interactive to gain maximum retention of the students. Since the inception of the edtech company in 2011, Vedantu has mentored more than 40,000 students in their platform.
The platform is India one of the most popular edtech companies that guides students between the class 6 to 12 with the help of qualified teachers. The company has a methodology of providing a two way process of video, audio and the use of a whiteboard. This enhances the efficiency of the class, where the students are driven towards more attention and leads to positive academic results. Vedantu is based in the city of Bengaluru and gives coaching to students who also want to appear for competitive exams. There are modules prepared in the platform that are also related to co-curricular activities. The sessions that result from cooperation between the students and the teachers offer engagement that matches the pace of the class. Pre-recorded video content lacks engagement between the students since there is no interaction.
The video service classes offered by Vedantu also required low bandwidth on the internet, which is a strong benefit for students living in areas with low connectivity or rural and remote regions. The holistic methods of Vedantu coupled with technology and innovation makes it a wonderful educational learning platform in the Kindergarten to Class 12 segment.
Vedantu was co-founded by Vamsi Krishna, who is the CEO, Pulkit Jain, the head of the division of product, Anand Prakash, who is the lead of academics along with Saurabh Saxena.
Vamsi Krishna studied Bachelors of Technology from the Indian Institute of Bombay in 2005. Before Vedantu, Vamsi co-founded an education platform called Lakshya Institute, which mentored aspirants for engineering and medical competitive exams. He was supported by three other alumni from IIT, namely, Saurabh Saxena, Pulkit Jain and Anand Prakash. From Lakshya, the founders guided more than 10,000 pupils and provided training to about 200 educators. In 2012, Lakshya was acquired by MT Educare.
Anand Prakash, who is the head of academics at Vedantu, worked as a manager at Abhishek Industries before he co-founded edtech platforms like Lakshya and Vedantu. Anand studied Bachelors of Technology from Indian Institute of Technology at Roorkee in the subject of Paper and Pulp Technology.
Pulkit Jain is the co-founder of Vedantu and studies Bachelors of Technology with the subject of Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology from Roorkee. He worked at Evalueserve in the position of Business Analyst. After that he went on co-founding Lakshya and Vedantu.
Saurabh Saxena exited from Vedantu in the year 2018. He served in the position of Head of Academics. He studied Bachelors of Technology in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology that is based in Roorkee. After leaving Vedantu, Saurabh founded Uable, and is the Chief Executive Officer at the company. Mr. Saxena also worked briefly as the Director of Ekya Schools. Vedantu currently has about 5,000 employees working for the company.
The educational technology platform has well-skilled educators that use a technology-focused setup for academic lessons. The learning experience shared by Vedantu ensures great student satisfaction. The quality education offered by Vedantu deals with student interaction in a comprehensive manner, where assessments and tests lead to better engagement among students. The edtech startup uses a portal called WAVE that stands for Whiteboard Audio Video Environment. In an unparalleled effort, Vedantu gives online learning with efficiency. The use of innovation and latest technology drives Vedantu’s vision for a better online education.
The word ‘Vedantu’ collectively means Knowledge and Network. The wisdom attached to the meaning shares a spirit of positivity towards every student that enrolls in the course modules. In 2006, with the initial interest of Vamsi Krishna, Lakshya was formed with Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena and Anand Prakash. All the four individuals were alumni of IITs. While training good educators and mentoring thousands of students at Lakshya, the co-founders were drawn towards the usage of technology and the regular brick and mortar education institutes were limiting several possibilities. In 2011, Vedantu was formed and the company raised about $ 290.9 million in about ten rounds of capital procurement.
Prominent investment firms like Tiger Global, Coatue and Accel and several others supported the educational technology startup and Vedantu developed itself as one of the biggest edtech companies in India. In September, 2021, Vedantu raised about $ 100 million, with Temasek backing ABC World Asia and other firms like GGV Capital, Tiger Global, WestBridge and Coatue invested in the edtech company. This round of funding took Vedantu to be the unicorn edtech company in India. Vedantu operates on a Business to Consumer model and offers virtual learning methods and coaching with the help of their WAVE portal. The modules for competitive exams offered by Vedantu give a lot of value to aspirants looking towards these tests. Vedantu’s revenue is generated from students paying for the online classes and from subscription packages that come in between Rs. 100 to Rs. 5,000.
In 2016, Vedantu was awarded by DNA as the ‘Best Company to Develop Technology for Education’. The edtech company also received the ‘KINSES EduAwards’ in 2016. In 2015, Praxis Media honored Vedantu with ‘Most Promising and Live Online Tutoring Platform’ in India. In August of 2020, Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain and Anand Krishna were the winners of the title of Comeback Kids in the start award by ET.
In the financial year of 2017, Vedantu recorded a revenue of about Rs. 93.7 crore. In the previous year, this revenue was about Rs. 24.6 crore. In the financial year of 2019, the revenue was Rs.10.44 crore. This hugely dedicates the model of the company towards an upward trajectory. In 2021, Vedantu had an expense figure of Rs. 736.13 crore. This was about Rs. 185.97 crore. Vedantu has a good figure of highest revenue to expense calculative ratio in the year 2021. In the early 2021, the growth of Vedantu was about two times of the annual figure.
This went to four times the annual revenue in the next couple of months. There are about 2.1 crore in hours of live content and the company also clocks about 10 lakh views every month on their Youtube channel. About 57 countries have access to Vedantu’s platform, where students share their learning journey with the online space.The educational technology space is sure to grow further in the upcoming years. Learners will seek alternate methods to consume quality education which will open to them new horizons of next generational teaching methodologies.
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