Unacademy: From a YouTube Channel to the Largest Learning Platform

The advent of COVID-19 acted as a catalyst for the startup of major EdTech platforms all over the world. However, Unacademy, with its tagline “India’s largest learning platform,” started online teaching even before it was the norm. Unacademy is a major platform that started in 2010 as a simple YouTube channel run by Hemesh Singh and Gaurav Munjal. Within the short span of five years, through their utmost efforts, perseverance, and dedication, it expanded to an education platform in the online arena. Its founders, Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Dr. Roman Saini, registered Unacademy as an education company in 2015 in Bengaluru. Unacademy is now a major and well-loved e-learning startup and one of the top EdTech companies in India. It entered the Unicorn Club in September 2020 after it was able to raise $150 million from Softbank and other existing investors.

What started as a forum to study for competitive exams has expanded its area of expertise to pre-medical, banking, CA, CAPF, UPSC, CLAT, and CAT, among others.

Unacademy has helped more than 30,00,000 students prepare for such examinations. To provide the students with the absolute best, the startup has partnered with many reputed teachers from all over the country. Over 2500 online courses, both free and paid, are available on the platform.

Unacademy: Founders and Team

Gaurav Munjal

Gaurav Munjal, the CEO of Unacademy, is an alumnus of St. Xavier’s Secondary School, where he was an active member of the Science Club and started coding in grade 12. He went on to bag a computer engineering degree from NMIMS University.

While he was enrolled in college, he had the idea of starting a YouTube channel. On the channel, he uploaded video tutorials on Java programming and other such coding concepts. He had a passion for technology and loved how he was able to mix education with technology. Later, he renamed his YouTube channel Unacademy.

After his graduation, the youngster wanted to build his own startup, and he started in the real estate industry. His first business venture was Flatchat, which helped people find flatmates for themselves. He moved on to work as a software developer at Directi while also managing his YouTube channel. In 2015, he sold Flatchat to CommonFloor, which is a real estate portal.

The same year, he partnered up with Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh and registered Unacademy as an online education platform in Bangalore.

Dr. Roman Saini

Dr. Roman Saini is the kid probably every Indian parent could wish for. Dr. Saini cracked the AIIMS medical entrance test at the young age of 16 and earned an MBBS degree by the time he was 21. He then worked at the National Drug Dependence Treatment Center at AIIMS for six months. Not yet content with this, he set his sights on conquering the toughest exam in India, the UPSC-CSE. His hard work and zeal bore fruit, and he cracked the exam to become one of the youngest IAS officers at the age of 22 and was posted as a district collector in Madhya Pradesh. However, cracking the two toughest exams in the country did not quench his thirst for greatness, and soon he quit his prestigious civil service job and joined hands with Gaurav Munjal and co-founded Unacademy, which has an estimated worth of Rs. 25,000 crore.

Hemesh Singh

Hemesh Singh is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for the EdTech platform at Unacademy. After completing his BTech from Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, he worked with Gaurav Munjal as the CTO of Flatchat before joining Unacademy.

Unacademy has launched a number of products for the benefit of students all over the country. Some of them are:

1. Learner App

2. Educator App

3. Parent App

Both live as well as recorded classes are offered via Unacademy by the best educators in India. Unacademy launched an AI content editor in April 2023 that allows users to easily "create, refine, edit, and publish" their work.

Further, the first Unacademy store was opened in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, in May 2023. Here, users can access high-quality education via brand offerings and get assistance from the knowledgeable staff of the business venture.

Also, Unacademy conducts the UNSAT, which is an acronym for Unacademy National Scholarship Admission Test, every year. UNSAT is conducted to support the aspirations of IIT Jee and NeEET UG learners.

The vision of Unacademy is to build several courses in multiple languages for students all over the world. Unacademy now aims to expand its services to students all over the world, not just in India. Catering to more than 30 competitive exams as of now, the focus of the company is on its growth by including more tests and exams to increase its subscribers.

This EdTech startup has raised $110 million from General Atlantic and Facebook. Moreover, it has received $510 million as a post-money valuation, which boosted the company. Unacademy has also received funds from the SoftBank Vision Fund, Tiger Global Management, and Temasek Holdings, among others, in the last couple of years. It has also been declared the official partner of the Indian Premier League for three seasons.

As of 2022, Gaurav Munjal received Rs. 1.58 crore as the CEO of Unacademy, Hemesh made Rs 1.19 crore as the CTO, and Dr. Roman Saini was paid Rs 88 lakhs.