India’s online learning giant, Unacademy has acquired Gate Academy, a Bengaluru-based test prep platform for an undisclosed amount.
As a part of the transaction, the entire team of Gate Academy will join the EdTech firm. Gate Academy’s founder, Umesh Dhande, has joined the Unacademy platform as Vice President, Academics, GATE and ESE.
With this deal, Unacademy has expanded its presence into the graduate aptitude test in engineering (GATE) test prep category.
The startup has recently launched 50 new education channels on YouTube. The announcement was made during its flagship event encompass broad categories—NEET UG and JEE, which includes Neev Udaan, NEET ki Neev, JEE QBank, Flash Learn, and Life after IIT, UPSC, other post graduation segments such as UPSC Unstoppable, Unacademy Margdarshak, EduQuest, IAS Icons, Tick Tock Tax and The 99 Percentile Club, bank, SSC and defence, including Unacademy Indradhanush, Unacademy Bangla, and Kerela Vijya Veethi.
Co-founded by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini in 2015, Unacademy specializes in test preparation for a wide array of competitive examinations including civil service, engineering and medical entrance and banking. It has a growing network of more than 91,000 registered educators and over 99 million learners, imparting education in over 14 Indian languages.
With the launch of Unacademy Centres, the EdTech leader also ventured into offline coaching for IIT-JEE and NEET prep. The Bengaluru-based startup has been on an acquisition spree as well for the past two years and has acquired nearly 12 startups between 2020 and 2022, including Swiflearn, Spayee, Rheo TV, Handa Ka Funda and more. Now, it has added Gate Academy to the club of brands.
The latest development comes at a time when the company has been mired with controversies including layoff, its tussle with Allen and more.
In August 2021, Unacademy had raised $440 million in a funding round led by Temasek, with General Atlantic, Tiger Global and Softbank Vision Fund pitching in as other participants. The fundraising took the Unacademy Group’s valuation to $3.44 billion, up from $2 billion in November 2020.
