Unacademy follows rival Byju’s to foray into offline learning

Unacademy founders Roman Saini, Gaurav Munjal and Hemesh Singh

SoftBank-backed edtech unicorn Unacademy has followed biggest rival Byju’s in the offline learning market, aiming to meet the growing demand for inter-personal mentoring for learners.

The company will launch Unacademy Centres that will facilitate offline classes for students and extend the access to top educators in the NEET-UG, IIT-JEE and foundation course (class 9-12) categories, the startup said on May 18.

The first Unacademy Centre will get operational in the Kota, the country’s private coaching hub, by June followed by similar touchpoints in Jaipur, Bengaluru Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Patna, Pune and Delhi, the SoftBank-backed company said.

It said offline batches will bring Unacademy’s offerings such as educators, pedagogy, study material, in-person mentorship, doubt solving and regular parent-educator counselling sessions to all its enrolled students.

The edtech unicorn said it aims to enrol up to 15,000 learners in the first batch.

The Unacademy Centre at Kota is spread across 18,000 square feet and has four floors, Unacademy said, adding that all centres would soon initiate regular offline classes starting with Kota.

The company said it would also conduct a national scholarship admission test for batch enrollments where rankers can win scholarships.

“Our experiential touchpoints—‘Unacademy World’ —have seen tremendous response from learners, many of whom have also expressed the need for in-person learning from the best educators,” founder Gaurav Munjal said.

“With ‘Unacademy Centres’ we will bring the best of Unacademy — India’s top educators, best-in-class technology and product, and state-of-the-art infrastructure — for our learners,” he added.

Unacademy’s forays into offline learning come a couple of months after Byju’s, the country’s most valued unicorn and Unacademy’s biggest competitor, had launched offline tuition centres with an investment of $200 million.

The offline forays of the two biggest edtech unicorns of India also highlight the rising demand for in-person and physical learning. Moreover, edtech companies are witnessing a slowdown in demand with the pandemic situation easing and schools and incumbent tuition centres opening up.

To be sure, the edtech sector has witnessed two consecutive years of hypergrowth, as companies saw their revenues surging manifold over the last two years amid a spurt in demand for remote learning due to the pandemic-induced lockdowns.