Unacademy acquires game streaming start-up Rheo TV

Days after Byju’s new acquisitions, competing edtech unicorn Unacademy has acquired a live game streaming platform, Rheo TV. All the existing investors of Rheo TV including Lightspeed India Partners, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, AET Fund, Phanindra Sama, founder and former CEO of RedBus, and Mahesh Narayanan, Ex-Country Head of Google Mobile, will exit as part of the deal.

Rheo TV’s co-founders Saksham Keshri and Prakash Kumar will join Relevel, an Unacademy Group company. Keshri and Kumar will retain their titles as co-founders at Relevel, a company that helps jobseekers showcase their skills through tests to secureemployment.

Regarding the acquisition, Keshri tweeted, “we will be joining Relevel to build a platform that helps job seekers irrespective of their educational background get jobs with the Best Companies in the World. Coming back to Unacademy feels like coming back home.”

Both Keshir and Kumar are former employees of Unacademy. Welcoming them back, Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal said in a tweet, “the Relevel founding team is getting stronger. Unacademy Group has acquired RheoTV. Keshri and Kumar will join Relevel as founders alongside co-founder and CEO Shashank Murali.” Murali is the founder of gigs marketplace Tapchief, which was acquired by Unacademy earlier this year.

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Started in 2019 by Keshri and Kumar, Rheo TV aimed to make professional game streaming a mainstream career option in India by building an entertainment ecosystem that drives engagement and monetisation. Within a year of launch, the platform says it has garnered over 5 million users and 10,000 live streamers.

Unacademy was founded by Munjal, Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini in 2015. Started as a YouTube channel by Munjal in 2010, Unacademy says it has a network of over 50,000 registered educators and over 62 million learners. The group comprises Unacademy, PrepLadder, CodeChef, Graphy and Relevel. The edtech company is backed by prominent investors such as Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, SoftBank VF2, Facebook, General Atlantic and Sequoia India. The Hindu BusinessLine