Unacademy, an education-technology company backed by Facebook Inc. and Blume Ventures, has acquired medical education platform PrepLadder Pvt. Ltd.
The value of the cash-and-stock deal is $50 million (about Rs 374.35 crore at current exchange rates), Unacademy said in a statement. It didn’t give a breakup of the cash and share components.
This is the second reported acquisition made by Unacademy, operated by Bengaluru-based Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt. Ltd, within four months. In March, it acquired Delhi-based online exam preparation startup Kreatryx.
“As we strengthen our position as a market leader in the test prep market, bringing PrepLadder on board will play a strategic role for Unacademy in the medical entrance examinations category,” said Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal.
Chandigarh-based PrepLadder was founded by Deepanshu Goyal, Vitul Goyal and Sahil Goyal in 2015. The firm says that its coverage includes the syllabus of the MBBS degree and that it has more than 86,000 active subscribers.
According to VCCEdge, the data research arm of Mosaic Digital, PrepLadder reported net sales of Rs 25.79 crore for 2018-19 and a profit after tax of Rs 7.17 crore.
Unacademy was also founded in 2015 by Munjal, Sachin Gupta, Hemesh Kumar Singh and Roman Saini. It helps educators create lessons on the Educator App, which learners access via the Learning App.
Its acquisition of Kreatryx came a month after the ed-tech firm raised $110 million (Rs 787 crore) from social network Facebook, US-based private equity firm General Atlantic and other investors including Sequoia Capital India, Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital and Blume.
Prior to its fundraise in February, the firm secured $50 million (around Rs 346 crore) in June last year as part of its Series D round from Steadview Capital, Sequoia, Nexus, Blume and others.
In 2018, early-stage venture capital WaterBridge Ventures, which had invested $1 million in Unacademy in 2016, exited with a return of five times on its investment. The exit was made possible by the $21 million (Rs 144 crore) investment from Sequoia, Nexus and SAIF Partners as part of Series C round of funding. Blume had also contributed to the funding round.
