The edu-tech startup, Unacademy, registered a massive growth in the previous month. Unacademy broke all its previously set records in terms of viewership, revenue and duration this month. The current pandemic situation and the nationwide lockdown served as leverage for Unacademy's massive growth, which invited more users to utilise the application interface for remote learning.
The figures
Unacademy's CEO, Gaurav Munjal, boasts in his statement that Unacademy has put up revenue figures that have surpassed the revenue figures posted in the last three financial years. It had an 82 per cent increase in revenue last month, at least 10 times higher than April '19. It also registered a whopping 165 million views on its YouTube channel, which is its highest ever in a single month. It also registered more than 1.4 billion minutes of screen presence across all its platforms- free interface, YouTube channel, subscribed content and special classes.
The reason behind the push
The nationwide lockdown since the 25th March due to current rampant coronavirus pandemic has impacted business in a major way. For the startups involved in content creation, healthtech, edutech and production are witnessing heydays due to a sudden increase in demand.
The current pandemic has sparked off the growth of edutech startups, as the interest among users to consume e-learning content witnessed a sudden acceleration due to the nationwide lockdown.
A bit about the company
The concept of Unacademy was floated off as a YouTube channel dedicated to educational content creation in 2010. It was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Sachin Gupta and Roman Saini. The Unacademy online interface was kicked off in 2016 when Roman, a doctor from AIIMS and one of the youngest individuals to crack UPSC joined the Unacademy team after quitting his job as an Assistant Collector in Jabalpur.
Unacademy's content has grown multifold since its inception, and they have registered millions of views across their dedicated YouTube channel as well as their online platform and mobile API, which was launched in February 2017. It aims to provide its subscribers with comprehensive learning from the people at the top of their specialisation to the people who suffer a deprival of such content. It is focussed on providing a democratic approach to education.
Over the last five years, Unacademy has raised close to $200 million in capital funding, with some major investors like Facebook, Nexus Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic on board.
Conclusion
With the lockdown situation in place, Unacademy is reaping solid benefit by leveraging the need of educational content as well as providing a more democratic approach to the learning system. Unacademy is an example of how the pandemic situation is affecting some business favourably. The company is now on the offence, as it gears itself to cater to the overwhelming demand- thanks to the meteoric growth of the "study-from-home" culture during the lockdown period.