Facebook-backed Unacademy racks up second acquisition with Kreatryx

Konselect Educare, a Delhi-based company that operates an examination preparatory portal for engineering graduates called Kreatryx, has been acquired by Unacademy in a cash and stock deal. The financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. 

The deal marks Facebook and Sequoia Capital backed Unacademy’s second acquisition so far. In October 2018, Sorting Hat Technologies, the Bengaluru based company that owns Unacademy, acquired Jaipur-based online education and career portal WiFiStudy in a similar cash and stock transaction.

Unacademy’s latest acquisition also comes a month after the test preparation platform provider raised $110 million in a growth funding round led by New York headquartered private equity firm General Atlantic and social networking giant Facebook.

Kreatryx was founded in 2014 by Ankit Goyal, an alumnus of IIT Indore and a former engineer with Qualcomm. It started as a preparatory platform for Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) and Engineering Services Examination (ESE) and later expanded into Staff Selection Commission (SSC), and direct recruitment examinations for Coal India and Vizag Steel. 

The acquisition is expected to aid Unacademy’s product offerings. The edtech platform operates on a freemium model and offers courses for competitive entrance exams through its learning and educator apps, Unacademy Learning App and Unacademy Educator App. It covers banks, civil services and (national eligibility and entrance test) for medical and engineering colleges. It claims a network of over 10,000 trainers and over 13 million users. 

“With its strong presence in the GATE and ESE segment, Kreatryx will play a pivotal role in further building our dominance in the segment and bring us closer to achieving our vision. I look forward to working with Ankit closely as he leads Kreatryx independently but as a part of the Unacademy Group,” Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and CEO of Unacademy said in a statement.

After the acquisition, Kreatryx will continue to operate as a separate brand owned by Unacademy and operated by Goyal. 

Despite the bleak startup funding scenario in India currently on account of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a smattering of deals over the last couple of weeks, notably in the edtech sector.

On Monday, online classroom platform Lido Learning raised $3 million in a funding round from Madhur Deora, president of digital payments firm Paytm, and Picus Capital, a German venture capital fund launched by Rocket Internet co-founder Alexander Samwer.

Earlier this month, Hyderabad headquartered International Education Gateway, which owns education courses aggregator Univariety, raised $1.1 million in an ongoing Series A round from Info Edge India. Also, Pigeon Education, which owns online learning platform Oda Class, raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round from Beijing headquartered digital education major Yuanfudao.