Upgrad buys Unacademy for over $200 mn, 94% below peak valuation

BENGALURU: Ronnie Screwvala-led upGrad has completed its all-stock acquisition of Unacademy for just over $200 million, valuing the test-preparation platform about 94% below its $3.4-billion peak in 2021. The deal marks one of the steepest valuation resets for an Indian startup following the pandemic-era edtech boom.Unacademy cofounder and CEO Gaurav Munjal announced the closure on Tuesday in unusually candid terms. “We raised at a peak, but sold at a fraction of that. I’m not going to dress these facts up,” he said in a LinkedIn post.The transaction is structured as a 100% share swap. This means Unacademy shareholders will receive shares in upGrad rather than a cash payout. The Competition Commission of India cleared the deal in July, approving the acquisition of shares in Unacademy parent Sorting Hat Technologies and its merger into upGrad Education.Munjal said the sale was not driven by a cash crunch. Unacademy has a topline of around Rs 400 crore, with most of its businesses profitable or close to profitability, and around Rs 900 crore in the bank, he said.“We had every option to keep going independently. Nobody was forcing this,” Munjal said. He framed the merger as a strategic choice, arguing that joining upGrad offered a more compelling path than continuing independently.The roots of the deal stretch back to 2020, according to Screwvala. Munjal had approached him and upGrad cofounder Mayank Kumar over lunch in Mumbai about combining the two companies. He had even proposed running the combined entity. upGrad did not pursue the idea at the time.Munjal reopened the conversation in late July 2025 when Unacademy was at what Screwvala described as a crossroads. After on-and-off negotiations, the two companies signed a share-swap term sheet in March this year.The combination takes upGrad beyond its mainstay of higher education, professional skilling and study-abroad programmes. It adds Unacademy’s presence in online test preparation, including courses for UPSC, JEE, NEET and GATE. Screwvala said Unacademy brings a strong consumer brand, product and technology-led thinking, and access to a different set of learners.Unacademy’s scale had surged during Covid. Cofounder Roman Saini said the platform hosted more than 100,000 live classes every month at its peak and had almost one million paid subscribers.Munjal said videos by educators associated with its free platform have crossed 10 billion views. He also highlighted language-learning app Airlearn, which he said became one of the world’s three most-downloaded apps in its category in under two years.Unacademy also conducted four employee stock-option buybacks. Munjal said these created value for employees even though the founders and investors “didn’t create much for themselves in the process”.Get the latest Business News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.