During this pandemic situation due to covid-19, the Indian online and virtual learning platforms have seen a drastic growth in their business. One of the most popular online education and learning platforms named Unacademy has come up with various options of courses for a different kind of preparation of competitive examinations. Due to the current situation of a pandemic, the online learning platform Unacademy has more than 350000 subscribers and registered users over 30 million. In the following case study, we will talk about the overall journey of the online education hub Unacademy, the funding, and marketing strategies to reach its goals.
Establishment of the Unacademy
In the year 2010, the online learning platform Unacademy began its journey through the youtube channel. Later after five years, Unacademy was evolved as a virtual portal for new-age learning students and educators. This was founded and established with the huge efforts of four co-founders Sachin Gupta, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh, and Gaurav Munjal.
Related Article: Using Byju’s App in a Post Pandemic World: A New Perspective
History of the Unacademy
The online learning and educational portal Unacademy was launched by Gaurav Munjal just as a Youtube channel just to explore it as a new hobby. One of the cofounders of Unacademy Munjal who was pursuing a bachelor of engineering started providing coding lessons in java through his youtube channel. The youtube channel was a big hit and equally successful, meanwhile, Munjal became one of the most popular and most followed people on a website called quora which is a site for questions and answers. He became famous for the answers he used to write on quora regarding the subject of computer science. Under the roof of the parent, business Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt Ltd, all the other remaining co-founders like Hemesh, Sachin, and Roman combined their equal efforts and helped Munjal to register the online educational portal Unacademy as a new brand in the year 2015. The portal provided completely free classes during the initial period of the first 3 years of its business and then gradually they came up with the subscription plan in the year 2019.
Features of the Unacademy
The online learning portal Unacademy provides an enormous range of courses highly developed by more than eighteen thousand teachers. The course curriculum which Unacademy offers has the syllabus of class 10 to class 12 and also competitive examinations like GATE, CAT, Bank PO, SSC, UPSC, NEET, JEE, and so on. The Unacademy platform provides its courses in both the form of pre-recorded videos and live classes. Students’ doubts are cleared after every fourth class of the week of the schedule. Moreover, Unacademy has presently started offering classes like chess and pastry making as well.
Funding of the Unacademy
Unacademy has become a part of the esteemed unicorn club which basically means that the company has crossed the mark of the valuation of one billion dollars. Moreover, it was the dream of one of the founders Gaurav Munjal to fetch the milestone before he turns 30 years old. Fortunately, the company Unacademy became a member of the prestigious unicorn club exactly six days before his 30th birthday.
The funding for Unacademy which have been taken place till now are as follows-
In January 2017 a funding was raised by Nexus venture and Blume venture partners which were approximate around dollar 4.5 million. Following the year, In September 2017 a funding of dollar 11.5 million was raised by SAIF and Sequoia India partners. In the next year which is 2018 in the month of July, a combined fund was raised by NEXUS Investment partners, SAIF Partners, and Sequoia India of around dollar 21 million. Later in February 2020 again combined funding was done by private equity of company General Atlantic, CEO of Flipkart that is Kalyan Krishnamurthy, NEXUS Ventures, Blume Ventures and Facebook of more than dollar 110 million and in September of that year, a funding od dollar 150 million was done by SoftBank Group. In November 2020 a fund was raised through Tiger Global but the amount was not disclosed and this made the company surpass the valuation of dollar two billion.
Marketing strategy of Unacademy
As part of the company’s aggressive strategy for marketing, the company makes extensive utilization of digital marketing such as OTT platforms like Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc, and also in google as well as with the help of social media. They also promoted their advertisement on out-of-home advertising processes like billboards and also promoted on radio and in television commercials. In tier 1 cities promoting the company at OTT Platforms and digital marketing is the main reason for the generation of high revenues. Out-of-home advertisements and TVC methods of promoting the company have possibilities to bring more numbers of leads to small towns. Unacademy doesn’t spend too much money on the newspaper advertising process.
Conclusion
The competition between all the Indian virtual learning and online educational platforms is getting tougher with each passing day. Mainly this is happening because of the fact that no one can step out in this current situation due to the coronavirus pandemic and students are strictly restricted to staying in their homes. Other similar rival companies such as Vedantu and BYJU are also moving ahead rapidly with an extensive marketing strategy. It is very observable that how these online educational companies imbue their campaigns of digital marketing just to generate leads, which they will convert into customers for the long term, mostly the credit goes to the exceptionally trained sales associates. In February 2021 Mr. Sachin Tendulkar the master blaster of Cricket signed a multi-layered contract with the company Unacademy. The former cricketer will provide interactive masterclasses and also will offer as the brand ambassador for the Unacademy platform. Moreover, Sachin Tendulkar has also taken up a small part of the stake of the company.
Also Read: Hybrid Learning: The Future of Education
