Steadview-backed Unacademy widens FY19 losses to Rs 90 crore

Sorting Hat Technologies, the Bengaluru based company that owns test preparation platform Unacademy, reported a 300% jump in revenues at Rs 21 crore for the financial year 2018-19. 

The jump in revenues may primarily be on account of synergies from the company’s acquisition of Jaipur-based online education portal WiFiStudy in October 2018. WiFiStudy had over 4.5 million subscribers mostly from Bharat cities with 70 million video views a month at the time of the acquisition.

Unacademy’s other income, which mostly consists of investments in non-core operations, also increased three-fold to Rs 10 crore, aiding the topline growth. 

However, the company’s losses widened to Rs 90.3 crore from 23.6 crore a year ago on account of higher employee costs and other expenses.

Unacademy, which claims to have around 10,000 instructors for its various courses, reported a  292% increase in its employee costs to Rs 42 crore. Its other expenses, which mainly include costs such as advertising and legal, increased to Rs 68 crore from 17 crore a year ago.

Total expenditure grew nearly four-fold to Rs 112 crore.

Founded in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Sachin Gupta, and Roman Saini, Unacademy offers coaching for various entrance examinations, through its learning app and educator app. It claims to have 13 million learners with over 2 million views every month. The learning app is based on a freemium model, where users can access both free and paid content. 

In a boost to its employees, Unacademy in July announced an employee stock option (ESOP) buyback plan, through which it will buy 30% of ESOPs issued to its employees.   

In June, the company had raised $50 million in a Series D funding round from hedge fund Steadview Capital and venture capital firms Sequoia Capital India, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures.