NAME: Sorting Hat Technologies’ Unacademy $459 million Series H fundraising
LAW FIRM: IndusLaw, AZB & Partners, Bharucha & Partners, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, Khaitan & Co
JURISDICTION: India
PRACTICE AREA: Private equity
INDUSTRY SECTORS: Education, Technology and telecommunications
The latest round of fundraising for Sorting Hat Technologies’ Unacademy is our deal of the month for August.
A slew of top Indian law firms acted on this matter last month, the latest deal in India’s red hot edutech sector. Sorting Hat Technologies’ (Sorting Hat) online learning platform, Unacademy, raised $459 million in a Series H funding round from investors that included Temasek, Tiger Global Management, Softbank Vision Fund, Mirae Asset and General Atlantic.
IndusLaw represented Sorting Hat Technologies, led by partners Suneeth Katarki and Rashi Saraf. Sorting Hat has retained IndusLaw for all its fundraising work.
An AZB & Partners team of Ashwath Rau, Srinath Dasari, Nanditha Gopal and Aditya Singh Chandel acted for Tiger Global, while Khaitan & Co advised both Softbank and Mirae Asset. Temasek was represented by Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and General Atlantic was counselled by Bharucha & Partners.
Sorting Hat is now valued at $3.44 billion following this round of funding. In total, the company has raised $860 million so far.
This latest fundraise underscores the attractiveness of educational technology companies and platforms to a growing host of private equity investors. In April, India’s most valuable edutech startup, Byju, raised $1.5 billion in three tranches of series F funding, nudging its valuation to over $15 billion. At the same time, it announced its acquisition of Aakash Education Services for $940 million. More recently at the end of July, Byju purchased Singapore-based professional training and higher learning education platform, Great Learning for $600 million, as well as smaller domestic rival Toppr for $150 million. The unicorn has spent more than $2.2 billion acquiring complementary businesses in the past year.
