Edtech's post-Covid offline push continues with Unacademy Centres

Bengaluru: Edtech unicorn Unacademy is foraying into offline learning with the launch of Unacademy Centres, as the demand for online education drops with the lifting of Covid restrictions.

Bengaluru-based Unacademy said its first offline centre will be operational in Kota by next month, followed by centres in Jaipur, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Patna, Pune and Delhi, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The company aims to enrol up to 15,000 learners in the first batch across its offline centres, its said in a statement.


It said the centres will facilitate learning from top educators in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) and grades 9 to 12.

“Unacademy aims to meet the growing demand for inter-personal mentoring for learners with this new approach,” Munjal said.

The company declined to share additional information on the total number of centres and how much it plans to invest in its offline play.

On February 17, arch-rival Byju’s had also announced plans to double down on its offline play with the launch of ‘Byju’s Tuition Centre’. Over the the past year, the company said that it launched 80 offline centres across 23 cities and is looking to scale that up to 500 centres across 200 cities this year. It had also earmarked $200 million for its offline learning play.

Founded in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini, Unacademy began as a YouTube channel. It presently has a network of 91,000 registered educators and over 92 million learners, with education being imparted in 14 Indian languages across 10,000 cities. Unacademy’s group comprises are Graphy, Relevel and CodeChef.

As a precursor to opening offline centres, Unacademy announced in March that it was adopting a hybrid-retail model with the launch of 'experience stores'.

The Unacademy Store has a counselling area for learners; an in-house library for reading sources, and classrooms that will host its top educators.

“Our experiential touchpoints, Unacademy World has seen tremendous response from learners, many of whom have also expressed the need for in-person learning from the best educators,” said cofounder and chief executive Munjal in a statement on Wednesday.

Other top edtech companies are also tapping into the offline education segment. Vedantu, which laid off another 424 employees on Wednesday, has been exploring hybrid models.

“Even before the pandemic we were partnering with some schools and experimenting with hybrid education models. We will continue to look back and explore offline or hybrid education modes going ahead. There is scope for offline models,” Vedantu’s cofounder Vamsi Krishna previously told ET.