Indian edtech startup Unacademy has been acquired by rival upGrad in an all-stock deal valuing the company at ₹19.55 billion (approximately $206 million) — about 94% below its 2021 peak valuation of $3.44 billion. The deal closed on September 1, 2026, nearly six months after it was first announced in March.
Unacademy co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal confirmed the closing in a post on X. “We raised at a peak, but sold at a fraction of that,” he wrote. “I’m not going to dress these facts up.” Unacademy shareholders will receive upGrad shares as part of the transaction, while angel investors were cashed out at closing, according to upGrad co-founder and chairperson Ronnie Screwvala.
The Bengaluru-based startup was backed by SoftBank, Tiger Global, and General Atlantic, and raised approximately $880 million across 13 funding rounds. At the time of the deal, Unacademy held around ₹9 billion ($94.8 million) in cash and reported annual revenue of roughly ₹4 billion ($42.13 million), with most of its businesses profitable or near profitability. Munjal noted the company had the option to continue operating independently.
The acquisition covers Unacademy’s full group, including PrepLadder, Graphy, and language-learning app Airlearn. The Unacademy brand will be retained, and Munjal will continue as CEO. No layoffs are planned for the roughly 1,000-person workforce.
The deal reflects a broader collapse in India’s edtech sector following the pandemic-era boom. Unacademy had spent heavily in 2020 and 2021 competing for students and educators as online learning demand surged, then cut costs and restructured after physical classes resumed. Leadership ultimately concluded that reaching the scale needed for a potential public listing would require expanding into more areas of education — a path that joining upGrad, which has a larger offline presence, could provide.
The sale follows the near-total collapse of Byju’s, once India’s most valuable startup at $22 billion, which entered insolvency proceedings in 2024.
Source: TechCrunch