When Gaurav Munjal was an engineering student in Mumbai in 2015, he first started Unacademy as a YouTube channel. To assist his peers in getting ready for the semester exams, Gaurav posted a brief video tutorial on computer graphics to his YouTube account. In order to produce free interactive content, Gaurav Munjal joined together with two of his friends, Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini, and released the Unacademy app in December 2015.
By 2017, it had more than 1 million students, 5,000+ registered educators, and more than 40,000 active classes. Along with other edtech companies like Simplilearn, PrepInsta Prime, UpGrad, Byjus, and Vedantu, Unacademy joined IAMAI’s India EdTech Consortium as one of its founding members in January 2022.
Unacademy was first launched as a YouTube channel in 2015, while Gaurav Munjal was a student studying engineering in Mumbai. Gaurav published a brief video tutorial on computer graphics to his YouTube channel to help his peers prepare for the semester examinations. Together with two of his friends, Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini, Gaurav Munjal created the Unacademy app, which was made available in December 2015, with the goal of creating free interactive content.
More than 5,000 registered teachers, more than 40,000 active classes, and more than 1 million students were all present by 2017. In January 2022, Unacademy became one of the founding members of the IAMAI’s India EdTech Consortium, together with other edtech businesses like Simplilearn, PrepInsta Prime, UpGrad, Byjus, and Vedantu.
Additionally, while Unacademy’s business from physical locations has grown by 655%, its online test prep vertical has shrunk by 15%.
Munjal said in the Slack talks that the company has positive cash flow and would continue to do so for the next 12 months. By the end of 2023, the key participant in edtech would also have Rs 1,977 crore in cash on hand. Given the company’s current burn rate of Rs. 17 crore, he pointed out that they have at least 116 months’ worth of runaway.
In another Slack conversation, Munjal restated his goal of making Unacademy the biggest edtech company. The author wrote, “I have said this before, and I will say it again.” The largest edtech company will soon be ours. We will be the ones who survive. We won’t let a few hiccups along the way stop us.
BT has gotten in touch with Unacademy for a formal reaction. We will revise the story whenever we hear back.
The edtech unicorn has been attempting to reduce expenses and make a profit for a while now.
The co-founder disclosed internally last month that the executive team will experience a “permanent salary cut. “The leadership team of Unacademy’s founding members will see permanent salary reductions.
A pay reduction may be made for the leaders depending on their current salary, their duties, and their performance. The compensation may be decreased by up to 25%. The information was shared in a Slack session by Munjal, who stated that the only time these reductions will be altered is in April 2024.
He also disclosed that the start-up is eliminating 12% of the employment in the same month. He explained that this action was being done to save expenses and increase profitability.
