Unacademy, upGrad Cancel Planned Acquisition Over Valuation Disagreements
Screwvala's upGrad was earlier said to be considering to acquire Unacademy at a valuation of $300-$400 million.
The planned acquisition of Unacademy by upGrad has been called off due to differences over valuations, it was confirmed on Thursday.
"We are not proceeding due to valuation differences. While we cannot comment on specific numbers, it is fair to say that we were unable to arrive at a mutually agreeable valuation," Ronnie Screwvala, co-founder of upGrad, told NDTV Profit.
upGrad was set to acquire Unacademy for a valuation of $300-$400 million, as per reports in November. This would have marked a sharp downslide, as compared to its last fundraise when the valuation was in excess of $3 billion.
Unacademy is backed by investors like SoftBank, Tiger Global, Temasek and General Atlantic. It last raised $440 million in 2021, led by Temasek with participation from Mirae Asset Venture and other investors like the family offices of Oyo Founder Ritesh Agarwal, and Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal.
The fundraise valued the Unacademy Group at $3.44 billion.
Apart from the acquisition of Unacademy, the deal under consideration involved the company's language-learning application AirLearn being spun off into a separate venture, with upGrad having no stake in it.
Notably, Unacademy had downsized its operations with regards to many of its offerings in the past two years, honing its focus on the core business in order to keep costs in check. It undertook many layoffs in 2022 and geared its operations to cater demand trends that emerged after the pandemic.
