upGrad Education Private Limited has acquired Unacademy Group for $206 million, structured primarily as share swap with an eventual merger of Unacademy into upGrad.
JSA Advocates and Solicitors advised Unacademy and its founders, Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh and Sumit Jain on this acquisition.
The transaction was led by Siddharth Manchanda (Partner), with support from Riya Gupta (Principal Associate), Aparimita Choudhary (Senior Associate), Associates Vaastu Tyagi and Aditya Jain.
CMS INDUSLAW advised Unacademy and its founders on all CCI related issues.
The competition law team consisted of Unnati Agrawal (Partner) and Hrishav Kumar (Associate).
The Firm also represented Nexus in connection with the transfer of its shares in Unacademy pursuant to the share swap transaction.
The transaction team included Winnie Shekhar (Partner), Shantanu Singh (Partner), Aditya Kumar (Principal Associate) with Ruhi Jain (Executive Director – Corpoate Compliance) and Akshay Madhvani (Assistant Manager) advising on corporate secretarial matters.
Khaitan & Co advised upGrad on this acquisition. The Firm advised on the structuring related aspects of the transaction from Indian foreign exchange laws and competition laws aspects; conducted a legal due diligence on Sorting Hat Technologies Private Limited and its subsidiaries; secured an unconditional approval of the transaction from the Competition Commission of India; and assisted in the negotiation and finalisation of the transaction documents.
The core transaction team consisted of Monika Srivastava (Partner), Sanchit Agarwal (Partner), Jubin Jay (Principal Associate), Chirag Mangal (Principal Associate), Deepansh Goyal (Senior Associate), Shubhang Upadhyay (Senior Associate), Aditi Gupta (Senior Associate), Daanish Dube (Senior Associate), Associates Shivangi Mishra, Akanksha Agrahari, Divyanshu Sharma, Devika Garg, Shriya Garg, Umang Agarwal, Laksh Sharma and Sameer Parihar. They were assisted by the following:
Competition law aspects: Pranjal Prateek (Partner), Alisha Mehra (Principal Associate), Associates Toshika Soni, Ritika Ghosh and Joshua Joseph.
Employment law aspects: Abhinav Rastogi (Partner), Ajeta Anand (Senior Associate).
Intellectual property aspects: Shailendra Bhandare (Partner), Vaishali Adhikari (Associate).
Data Privacy aspects: Supratim Chakraborty (Partner), Shramana Dwibedi (Principal Associate).
Employment law and benefits aspects: Shabnam Shaikh (Partner).
River Law also advised upGrad on this acquisition.
The upGrad in-house team working on this transaction consisted of Koell Hemdev (General Counsel, CHRO), Khushboo Shah (Company Secretary and Director - Legal) and Vaibhav Bhandari (Vice President - Group Finance Controller).
Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co advised Steadview Capital on the transfer of its Unacademy shares via the share swap.
The transaction was led by Harshita Srivastava (Partner) and Vidhisha Ambade (Senior Associate).
Bharucha & Partners advised General Atlantic on the transfer of its Unacademy shares via the share swap.
The transaction was led by Vandana Pai (Senior Partner) and Ayush Jain (Partner).
Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Bombay Law Chambers were involved in this transaction in various capacities.
Gunderson Dettmer and Fenwick were the international counsel involved in this transaction.
The acquisition of Unacademy expands upGrad's footprint into online test preparation and K-12 learning, uniting two of India's major online education giants.
Gaurav Munjal, Co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, will remain to lead the business alongside the upGrad team.
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