So finally, Unacademy has gotten acquired for ~$218 Million in an all stock transaction. This is after the company raised over $850M over the course of a decade, and reached a valuation of $3.4 Billion in its last funding round.

What's most interesting is that Unacademy is believed to have about $100-130M worth of cash in its books. Which means the actual value of the business has been marked at about $90-120M only. And that too completely tied in Upgrad's stock.

This might seem like a harsh outcome for the company, but it's actually quite an incredible save. Just a few months later, Unacademy might have been worth even less. (The company tried to sell itself to Allen for $800M in 2024. It didn't work. In 2025, it asked for $300M from Upgrad, which also didn't work. So you can guess where it was really going).

Now we had two questions before this deal went through:

1. What is the true value of Unacademy, and

2. What were folks who valued it at $3.4B smoking back in 2021

Some time ago, I answered the first question. I wrote:

"Unacademy is a loss making business with declining revenues. Has always been. In the last FY, it had sales of ~$90M, with losses of over $50M. In the FY prior, it had a sales of ~$110M, at a loss of $76M. Ever since it started 10 years ago, it's never come close to breaking even, and since 2021 has made over ₹7130 Cr (~$800M) in net losses."

"The only good way Unacademy has ever earned money has been interest on its FDs. Like in FY23, it earned ₹137 Cr from it."

"So the true value of Unacademy's business, for all practical purposes, is a song. You could give it a revenue multiple of .5-.8x, which translates to about $45 to $70M. And then add its cash reserves of ~$130M. Hence about $185 - $200M is what it's worth. Fair and square."

Now all that's proven to be almost absolutely right, which is okay. But the second question still remains unanswered. "What were they smoking?". This can't stay a secret because it's the only question that matters, really.

Unacademy's "Series H" of $440M (which gave it the $3.4B valuation) was "exclusively" advised by Avendus Capital. The round was led by Temasek, with participation from Softbank VF 2, Tiger Global, GAtlantic, Mirae Asset, along with Ritesh Agarwal's family office and Mr. Deepinder Goyal. Before this one, there was "Series G", which valued the company at $2B, just 5 months prior.

What's to be noted is that this wasn't a seed round based entirely on gut feel and hope. It was a 6 Y/O firm with the following numbers.

Year: Revenue/Loss (in Cr)

2018: ₹5/₹24

2019: ₹22/₹90

2020: ₹86/₹300

2021: ₹398/₹1537

As you can see, as its revenues rose, so did the losses, almost linearly. There's absolutely no way any financial model could've justified putting any money into UA at the time. So what Chooran did the founders (and Avendus) sell to all the investors at the time?

Until we know the answer to that question, we don't know anything. That question is the answer to this life and universe.

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