Ed-tech platform Unacademy raises $500K

Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs education technology platform Unacademy, has raised $500,000 (about Rs 3.3 crore) in a funding round led by Blume Ventures.

Google's Rajan Anandan, CommonFloor founder Sumit Jain, redBus founder Phanindra Sama, TaxiForSure founder Aprameya Radhakrishna and former Flipkart executive Sujeet Kumar also participated in the round.

"Unacademy's vision is to distribute knowledge of the educators and innovators in the form of mini courses having lessons of not more than 10 minutes each," Gaurav Munjal, co-founder, Unacademy, said in a statement.

The development was first reported by The Economic Times.

Founded by Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Roman Saini and Sachin Gupta in December 2015, the platform provides high-quality educational videos for free. Unacademy started as a YouTube channel in 2010 featuring educational talks by experts. The startup claims to have received over 12 million views till date on its video channel.

"Delivery of education in India needs radical shifts. Unacademy is a manifestation of the team's vision to make all forms of educative material so intuitive and accessible that learning becomes extremely interesting and scalable," Karthik Reddy, managing partner at Blume Ventures said.

The ed-tech segment has, meanwhile, seen several startups catch investor interest.

Last month, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation backed ed-tech startup Oliveboard. In the same month, ed-tech startup CollegeDekho.com, run by GirnarSoft Education Services Pvt. Ltd, raised $2 million in its pre-Series A funding round from London-based Man Capital LLP.

In March, tutorial company Byju's raised $75 million (about Rs 500 crore) from Sequoia India and Belgian investment firm Sofina, in what is perhaps the largest deal in this space till date.

In the same month, financial services and analytics education startup Imarticus Learning has raised $1 million (around Rs 6.7 crore) from a bunch of investors including VC fund Blinc Advisors.

In late February, ed-tech firm Carveniche Technologies Pvt. Ltd secured angel funding from Calcutta Angels, Lead Angels and a bunch of wealthy individuals.

In February, Mohandas Pai and Aarin Capital seed-funded ed-tech startup Oust Labs Inc., which helps students prepare for competitive exams using mobile gaming technology.

In January, Jaipur-based EduCommerce Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs mobile-based education startup Myly, raised $100,000 (about Rs 67 lakh) in seed funding from Newbie Promoter Pvt Ltd.

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