One of India’s edtech high-flyers has come down to earth. Unacademy has sold to rival upGrad in an all-stock deal valuing the Bengaluru company at about $206M, roughly 94% below its peak valuation.
The transaction, announced in March and closed this week, hands Unacademy shareholders upGrad shares while cashing out angel investors at closing, upGrad co-founder and chairperson Ronnie Screwvala told TechCrunch. Unacademy co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal confirmed the close on X, writing, “We raised at a peak, but sold at a fraction of that.”
Unacademy’s backers include SoftBank, Tiger Global and General Atlantic, investors who helped inflate its valuation to $3.44B during the pandemic-era edtech boom. The company spent heavily in 2020 and 2021 battling rivals such as Byju’s for students, then watched demand collapse as physical classes reopened.
Munjal noted the startup still held roughly $95M in cash and generated about $42M in annual revenue, with most businesses profitable or near it. “Nobody was forcing this,” he wrote, framing the sale as a strategic choice rather than a fire sale.
Leadership concluded that reaching scale or a public listing would demand expansion into more education segments, a path upGrad has already built through offline learning. The deal hands the combined group a stronger position in India’s consolidating tutoring market.
