Success Story of Unacademy - A Learning Platform Designed for Competitive Examinations

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Unacademy.

Classroom learning is seen as a hindrance by many to discovering new things. Besides, a lot of students also go unnoticed this way and eventually fail to explore the world around them with the lack of attention and opportunity they get in a physical class. Furthermore, when it comes to competitive examinations, many students in remote places are even unaware of the best teachers and updated methods to crack these exams. Unacademy unscrambles these problems with its online learning platform with the top educators in the country. The company offers courses and lectures for several competitive examinations such as CAT, JEE, NEET, CLAT, UPSC CSE/IAS, IBPS/SBI, RRB, and video classes on various subjects, thus empowering the students to excel in this competitive world.

Unacademy is an Edtech company established in 2015. The company had its beginnings as a Youtube channel created by Gaurav Munjal and started by Dheeraj Meena. Later on, in 2015, the company was registered in Bengaluru as an education company. The company has entered the Unicorn club in September 2020 after it raised $150 million from Softbank and other existing investors.

Here's StartupTalky bringing you all that you want to know about Unacademy, including Latest News, Founders and Team, Name, Tagline, Logo, Mission, Vision, Growth and Revenue, Funding and Investors, Acquisitions, Competitors, and more.

Unacademy - Company Highlights

Unacademy - About
Unacademy - Industry
Unacademy - Founders and Team
Unacademy - Name, Tagline, and Logo
Unacademy - Vision and Mission
Unacademy - Educators
Unacademy - Growth and Revenue
Unacademy - Partnerships
Unacademy - Campaigns
Unacademy - Funding and Investors
Unacademy - Acquisitions
Unacademy - ESOPs
Unacademy - Business and Revenue Model
Unacademy - Challenges
Unacademy - Competitors
Unacademy - Future Plans

Unacademy - About

Unacademy is an online platform that makes both learning and teaching easy with its educational videos and lectures. Initially, it was founded in the year 2010 with videos streaming on YouTube, but it officially got launched in the year 2015.

The company has achieved spectacular growth with more than 10K educators and over 13 Million users since it has been founded. Unacademy Co-founder and CTO Hemesh Singh have proudly posted that it has crossed 750,000 active paid subscribers. Currently, its active subscribers have crossed the 800K, as of April 28, 2022, which was shared again by Gaurav Munjal.

It has earlier posted of attaining the milestone of 650,000 active subscribers on its platform, as per Unacademy COO Vivek Sinha's tweet dated September 9, 2021.

Numerous platforms of Unacademy including Unacademy Plus, and other properties of the company like Chamomile Tea with Toppers, Wifistudy, The Solutionists, Unacademy JEE, and Unacademy Studios, with which it acquires nearly 110 Million views every month, makes it the largest distributor of educational content. The learning app is compatible with Android, iOS, and Windows and thus can be easily accessed by all.

Unacademy Products

Unacademy products include:

• Learner App
• Educator App
• Parent App

Unacademy offers both live and recorded classes from India's best educators via:

• Structured Syllabus
• Daily Live Classes
• Doubt-clearing sessions
• Tests and Practice Opportunities

Unacademy - Industry

The market for kindergarten to 12th grade was valued at $1.16 billion whereas the skill development market was estimated to be worth less than $500 million. As a whole, the edtech market in India was worth $2.8 billion in 2020. However, this is set to drastically change by 2025, when the market of Edtech is estimated to be valued at $10.4 billion.

Unacademy - Founders and Team

Unacademy was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Dr. Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh. Though it was started under the same name by Gaurav Munjal and Dheeraj Meena as an educational channel on Youtube in 2010, the company was officially registered as an education company, Unacademy in 2015 in Bengaluru.

Gaurav Munjal

Gaurav Munjal, the CEO of Unacademy, sold his first company FlatChat, to CommonFloor in 2014, and is currently developing Unacademy. A St. Xavier's Jaipur student, Munjal has a Btech in Computer Engineering from NMIMS, Mumbai. After a brief internship at Directi, Munjal founded Unacademy, as a Youtube channel providing easy, study-related videos for the students. However, he left the same and joined Directi as a Software Developer, where he remained for a little more than a year before founding FlatChat. He served as the FlatChat Founder and CEO but after the same had been acquired by CommonFloor. Munjal started revamping Unacademy from the scratch and developed it into the company we see now.

Dr. Roman Saini

Roman Saini, who is a doctor from AIIMS, cleared the Civil Service Exam (IAS) in 2013. He quit his administrative roles and is now the Co-founder and Chief Educator of Unacademy.

Hemesh Singh

Hemesh Singh is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Co-founder of Unacademy, who was also the CTO of FlatChat formerly.

Unacademy CMO, Karan Shroff has been promoted to the position of a partner with the help of the company's internal 'Partner' program for the employees, as of September 7, 2021. This program is decided upon by the company to recognize the key leaders of the organization. The partner position, as mentioned by Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal, is similar to being a co-founder of the company.

Karan Shroff is currently serving as a Partner and the Chief Marketing Officer of Unacademy. Shroff forwarded an email on April 6, 2022, that came from Elon Musk, which said what the managers of Musk's company must do if he sends an email. Forwarding the mail, Karan Shroff lauded the work culture that is followed by companies like Tesla and mentioned that working on similar lines, focusing on ownership, accountability, modesty, clarity, clear directions and actionable information, can lead to rapid, sustainable growth. Here goes Karan Shroff's LinkedIn forward:

Karan Shroff on LinkedIn: #Tesla #culture #growth

Interesting way to build a high performance culture. - Ownership at both ends- Accountability on both ends- Modesty and clarity- Clear directions ...

LinkedIn315 Posts

The company now operates with over 5000 employees and yields a market price of $3.44 Billion, building a strong community of technology-driven self-learners.

Unacademy Shareholding

Unacademy's largest shareholders are Nexus Venture Partners and Sequoia India, which holds 13.1% each of the company's shares. Around 14.4% of Unacademy shares are in its ESOP pool. Softbank, General Atlantic and more form the other shareholders of the company. Unacademy Co-founders - Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh together retain over 9% stakes in Unacademy.

Unacademy - Name, Tagline, and Logo

The name Unacademy [Un (Not) - Academy] states that this learning platform differs from the conventional methods of education, unlike an institution or academy which is accessible to everyone. “India’s largest learning platform” is the tagline of the company.

Unacademy - Vision and Mission

Unacademy’s vision is to build numerous courses in multiple languages for students all over the world. Expanding its educators along with the students, Unacademy aims to collaborate with the brightest minds and empower India’s youth population which accounts for 19% of the world’s youth, to bring oneself into this contemporary world. 70% of its learners come from Tier 3 cities, where there is a lack of top educators, thus, the startup focuses on enlarging its teachers, and languages, and adding more exams to the existing mixture.

“By leveraging technology and high-quality educators, we aim to move closer to our mission of democratising education at all levels, starting with test prep,”

“We are seeing unprecedented growth and engagement from learners in smaller towns and cities, and are also very humbled to see that top-quality educators are choosing Unacademy as their primary platform to reach out to students.”, says Gaurav Munjal, CEO of Unacademy.

Unacademy - Educators

Unacademy imposes life lessons and motivational talks with top educators in its exclusive “Legends on Unacademy” initiative. The first edition included famous cricketers Brian Lara, Brett Lee, and Jonty Rhodes as educators, talking about their challenges and achievements. The second edition of “Legends on Unacademy” involved Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, India’s first woman IPS officer Kiran Bedi, and the star couple Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma. Apart from this, the educators for all the sectors are highly accomplished with prior proficiency and in-depth erudition.

“These interactive classes will not only equip our learners with academic knowledge, but also empower them with extraordinary life skills, and help them hone their ability to overcome various challenges”, said Karan Shroff, Vice President, Marketing at Unacademy.

Celebrity educators would join in soon with Unacademy, who will teach the students extracurricular courses via "Unacademy Icons", which is all set to be launched in 2022. Though this new venture sounds almost like FrontRow, Celebrity School, Artium Academy, and Mento, in the first impression, the working model is still not clear and would only be clear after the official confirmation from the company.

Unacademy - Growth and Revenue

Unacademy has emerged as one of the largest companies in the Edtech space in 2021, which has successfully raised quite a sum via the funding rounds and has acquired around 12 companies including CodeChef, Coursavy, and more. The company is currently hailed as the second most valued ed-tech startup.

Unacademy states that the greatest success of them relies on the students who crack the toughest of examinations. Catering to 32+ competitive exams as of now, the company focuses on its growth by including more tests and exams, to append subscribers. This Edtech startup has raised $110 Million from General Atlantic and Facebook and received a post-money valuation of $510 Million, which was an added boost for the company that has already seen big names, such as Sequoia Capital India, Steadview Capital at the start of its career. The company has also received funds from SoftBank Vision Fund, Dragoneer Investment Group, Tiger Global Management, and Temasek Holdings in the last couple of years.

“We started to monetise around a year ago, and in the first month, we made around Rs 2 crore in revenue, and last month we did around Rs 18 crore. So, we’ve grown 9X in 12 months and we plan to continue growing from here,” said Gaurav Munjal.

Unacademy has signed former skipper of the Indian cricket team, MS Dhoni, and the contract is for 2 years, as the report goes. The company has started its campaigns with an elaborate video shoot with Dhoni, which will be released soon and is now in the post-production phase.

Unacademy Offline Learning via "Learning Centres"

Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal announced the plans of Unacademy to launch Learning Centres, which will start with Kota, Rajasthan, as per the news dated May 19, 2022. Unacademy also has plans to introduce national scholarships/admission tests to enrol students and provide them scholarships much like FIITJEE, Aakash Institute, and more. Jaipur, Chandigarh, Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Patna, Pune and Ahmedabad are some more cities where the service would likely start. In its Learning Centres, Unacademy has planned to enrol up to 15K learners across NEET, JEE, and Foundation Courses. For its Kota centre, Unacademy has hired 30 educators to date as of June 14, 2022, all of whom previously worked at Allen. The company also stated that it has set up its first 2 Unacademy centres in Kota as per the reports on June 14, 2022. These centres will be operating in a hybrid mode where there will be offline classes for a few days a week.

The first of the Unacademy Learning Centres will be set up in an 18K sq ft. space and the classes will be conducted by educators. The edtech unicorn has already set up the centres for NEET-UG, IIT JEE, and Foundation (Classes 9 and 10) categories, the first batch of which will be beginning on June 16, 2022.

Unacademy has achieved numerous growth milestones throughout the years. Here are some of the prominent growth highlights of Unacademy:

• Unacademy offers preparation for over 60 categories of exams.
• It has over 5,00,000 registered educators on its platform.
• The company boasts of having 1 million+ video lessons.
• The Edtech unicorn has 315+ million total views for its YouTube videos.
• Unacademy has opened its first physical store in New Delhi, as per reports dated March 12, 2022, and will open similar stores in Kota, Jaipur, and Lucknow.

According to the financials released recently by the Bangalore-based Edtech startup, Unacademy's losses multiplied to Rs 1,537.4 crore in FY21 from Rs 258.6 crore in FY20, thereby increasing by 494% in FY21. The total expenses of the company rose by 349% in FY21. The edtech unicorn also saw its revenues rise by 350%. The total income of the company was recorded at Rs 64.7 crore in FY20, which rose to Rs 464.53 crore this fiscal (FY21).

Unacademy has disclosed its plans of conducting an IPO in the next 2 years, according to the reports dated July 11, 2022. However, for that to happen, the startup must first turn cashflow positive. Besides, its expenses need to be reduced, for which the founders and the top managers of the company are likely to receive pay cuts. According to the sources, the founders have already taken pay cuts and the management will also do the same now. The startup will also refrain from providing dedicated drivers to the CXOs and would not offer business-class travel for anyone, that includes the CXOs and the founders.

Here's a look at the revenue breakdown of Unacademy:

Unacademy Revenue Breakdown

Unacademy Expenses Breakdown

Looking at the expenses sheet, a majority (37%) of the Unacademy expenses went for the employee benefits, which ballooned more than 6X in FY21, growing from Rs 120 cr to Rs 748.5 cr during the same fiscal. However, here it is important to note that out of the total expenses around Rs 474.4 crore were share-based payments and out of these share-based payments, 83% of such payments (Rs 392 crore) would be settled in cash in the upcoming years.    

Unacademy Financials

The EBITDA margin increased slightly from FY20 to FY21 and the losses ballooned around 6X.

Unacademy - Partnerships

Unacademy has seen numerous successful partnerships throughout time. Some of the prominent ones are as follows:

• Unacademy has signed an MoU with the Backward Classes Welfare Department (BCWD) of the Govt. of Telangana, which will identify and empower meritorious students from the state and provide them with scholarships. As per the collaboration, Unacademy is ready to conduct a series of aptitude tests for the meritorious students of Telangana in 3 phases, which will cater to the college entrance and government job exams. Around 4500 aspirants will receive the benefits of the scholarship program, which is the Unacademy Plus subscription, as announced by Unacademy on April 6, 2022. The ed-tech unicorn had already signed an MoU for a similar scholarship program with the Odisha Govt. towards the end of 2021.
• The Gaurav Munjal-led ed-tech company has been declared the official partner of IPL for 3 seasons of the cricketing carnival, as reported in August 2020.
• Unacademy has partnered with TapChief on January 24, 2017, to help the students land their first jobs.

Unacademy - Campaigns

Unacademy launched its "Meri Pehli Academy" campaign on May 5, 2022, which celebrates womanhood prior to Mother's Day.

Unacademy partnered with MS Dhoni on August 11, 2021, and has unveiled an 85-second brand film featuring its brand ambassador, the former Indian cricket team skipper.

Unacademy has earlier partnered with the Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar. The Gaurav Munjal-led came out with an advertising campaign featuring the master blaster, his failures, and his eventual success on March 2, 2021.  

Unacademy is well-known for its IPL campaigns, which the company features amidst the commentary box talks. Campaigns like "Mauke pe Chauka", "Kya Hum Live Hai", "What a Wonderful Advert"  and more.

It previously launched the "Let's Crack it" campaign in November 2019, which was its first ATL campaign.

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Unacademy - Funding and Investors

Unacademy is now valued at $3.44 Billion, after the recent fundraising round, Series H, led by Temasek, Softbank, Tiger Global, and others on August 1, 2021, where the company has raised $440 million.

Initially, Unacademy raised a seed funding of $500K from Blume Ventures in May 2016. The latest funding was raised on August 1, 2021.

“We were thrilled with how rapidly Gaurav (Munjal) and the team converted some of our collective product brainstorming sessions into an amazing live-streaming product and a subscription business for the test prep market,” said Shailendra Singh, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital.

The total funding amount raised by Unacademy is $838.5 Million over 12 funding rounds.

Unacademy raised some iconic rounds from the biggies in the investment and corporate world including General Atlantic, Facebook, Sequoia Capital, Flipkart, Softbank, Nexus, Blume, Tiger Global, Dragoneer, Temasek, and more. One such round came in February 2020, when funding close to $110 mn came from the likes of General Atlantic, Facebook, Flipkart, and others. Though the money infused by Facebook was undisclosed, the social media giant reportedly poured in around $20 mn in the round. The same round elicited some amazing responses both from Unacademy and Facebook.

"We thank General Atlantic and Facebook who have joined us in this journey and our existing investors who continue to be a part of the journey by supporting us. Our goal is to democratise education and become not just the largest educational organisation but the largest consumer Internet story out of India," Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO, Unacademy, said in a statement.

"Facebook is an ally for India's economic growth and social development, and we are excited about India and its rapidly rising Internet ecosystem," said Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director, Facebook India.

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Unacademy - Acquisitions

Facebook-based Unacademy has acquired 12 startups to date to strengthen its position in the Edtech Sector. The last of the acquisitions was Swiflearn, which was acquired by Unacademy on November 3, 2021. The company previously acquired the Edtech Saas platform Spayee, which was acquired by Unacademy-backed Graphy on October 11, 2021.

Unacademy was in talks since October 18, 2021, to acquire Swiflearn, a Gurugram-based full-stack online platform for academic courses that aims to provide a personalized learning experience for the students. Founded by Abhinav Agarwal and Anand Bakode, Swiflearn currently focuses on the K-10 segment and extends free and subscription-based classes for the students. The acquisition deal was then in its latter stages and was estimated to be worth around $15-20 million. Finally, the acquisition happened on 3rd November and is in line with the company's strategies to cement its position in the K-12 category. However, the deal amount is still undisclosed. The acquisition of CodeChef was one of the major acquisitions of Unacademy, which delighted both Gaurav Munjal and Bhavin Turakhia.    

The list of Acquisitions is as follows:

Unacademy - ESOPs

Unacademy has announced the expansion of its ESOP pool by 19.8%. The Unacademy ESOP pool will now consist of 286 mn options from the earlier announced 238.7 mn options. As per reports dated July 9, 2022, each option of Unacademy is currently priced at Rs 109, meaning that the total size of the ESOP pool would be worth around Rs 3,118 crore ($393 mn).

The edtech giant had earlier expanded its ESOP size from 99K to 238 mn, which is a 2401X jump on April 20, 2022.

Unacademy had already announced its ESOP buyback plan on September 4, 2021, the company further reassured that it would be the company's largest employee stock ownership plan for the team members and educators of the platform.

Co-founder Roman Saini mentioned that this ESOPs buyback will be the third and largest by the online learning platform. Furthermore, he also thanked the employees of Unacademy because of their belief in the company's “vision of democratizing education”. He also added that Unacademy is also announcing the Teacher Stock Options (TSOPs) for its educators, who will be eligible for fully vested Stock Grants after they complete 3, 4, and 5 years with Unacademy.

Munjal further disclosed that the company currently has 300+ educators, who are eligible for the grant, which they will get immediately. The company will offer grants of over $40 million over the next few years to its educators.

"We are who we are because of our Educators and we want our Educators to grow and create wealth as Unacademy grows!” added Munjal.

Unacademy - Business and Revenue Model

Unacademy operates on B2B and B2C business models, where the main income of the company lies in paid memberships that they offer!

Unacademy's basic revenue model is of a Freemium type. Here the company offers a range of services for free, which the audiences can continue. However, if they want more high-quality content, then they need to pay a small fee for the same.

Unacademy Plus - Unacademy offers numerous classes along with pre-recorded video lectures furnished with ample information for free for all the students. However, the company also offers paid live classes to help the student clear their doubts with one-on-one doubt clearance sessions and proper lectures. This can be availed through a premium subscription called 'Unacademy Plus.' The Unacademy Plus subscription was launched at Rs 299 to celebrate the Unacademy Learning Festival. This offer was valid from April 23 to April 30, 2022, for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET UG), and students from Class 8 to 12.

Relevel - Unacademy has launched another platform called Relevel in May 2021. This new platform is designed to help job seekers find their jobs within 15 days of application. Relevel claims of having more than 2.35 lakh users and boasts of a 100% placement rate, as of October 1, 2021. The people who have secured jobs are mostly from Tier II and Tier III cities in the country. Besides, the experienced job seekers claimed to have attained up to a 150% salary hike through Unacademy's job portal.

Relevel has witnessed 64+ companies to date on its platform across sectors, which have interviewed the candidates on the basis of the tests. Frontend Development, Backend Development, and Business Development are the 3 tests that Relevel conducts for job seekers as of now. These 3 tests are diverse in nature ranging from MCQs, algorithmic tests, and case studies and are conducted within a day. Sometimes, the Relevel tests include the building of a mini-app followed by a final round of interviews with an industry expert. Shashank Murali, the founder of the recruitment platform, currently heads it, as the CEO of Relevel. The platform successfully raised $20 mn from Unacademy on October 1, 2021. In terms of revenue, Relevel crossed $10 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in June 2022.

Graphy - The Unacademy Group boasts of Graphy, which serves as a platform that is designed to help the creators of the country grow their audiences. Furthermore, it also helps them monetize their skills, host live cohort-based courses, and more. The all-new Graphy that acts as a Saas platform welcomes influencers, educators, and domain experts from across the country.

On June 22, 2021, Unacademy's Graphy announced its Graphy Creator Grant, which is deemed to help the applicants start with their online school.

Youtube channels - We all know that Unacademy first started as a Youtube channel. Though the business has grown far and wide since 2010, the company still runs its Youtube channel. The only difference is that the company now runs different Youtube channels instead of one, under names like Unacademy JEE, Unacademy UPSC, and others for the school students between 6th and 8th standards.

Content marketing - Unacademy is excellent in its marketing strategies, be it for the brand or its contents. It markets its contents using numerous cutting-edge techniques. Furthermore, it uses social media marketing, email marketing, advertisements on its website as well as on other websites to generate leads, and more.

In-app purchases - Unacademy also earns significantly through their in-app purchases. The company lists offers and discounts regularly on its app covering live classes, study materials, live mock tests, quizzes, other premium content, and more.

‘Unacademy Plus’ has nearly 100,000 subscribers, and offers paid educational services. These paid subscriptions are the main source of revenue for Unacademy.

Learning Resources - Unacademy offers a wide range of learning resources for the students to go about their learning processes. These are mainly of two types:

• Pre-recorded videos
• LIVE sessions

Though most of the pre-recorded videos are viewable for free, the Live sessions are chargeable.

Unacademy decided to shut down Mastree, an online platform for kids to master communication, on September 2, 2021, almost one year after the company has acquired the firm. Unacademy will absorb around 80% of the Mastree workforce, which is 190 employees out of the firm's total workforce of 240.

Unacademy Store - Unacademy is looking to launch "Unacademy Stores", which will stand as offline experience centers with an aim to develop its physical presence and spread its wings beyond test preparation. The startup will start with its Unacademy Stores in the Delhi NCR region. The Unacademy Store has an experience zone that has a wide range of devices on display with Unacademy's content running on them.

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Unacademy - Challenges

Unacademy has faced numerous challenges since its existence as an ed-tech company in India. The most prominent challenge that it faces is tough competition from the other edtech companies thriving in India.

Unacademy Layoffs

The ed-tech major has reportedly laid off around 1K of its workforce in the past weeks, according to the reports dated April 7, 2022. The Unacademy employees who were asked to leave include on-roll staff and contractual educators. As far as the reports go, around 600 of these employees were asked to resign throughout the last week of March 2022. This massive downsizing initiative was most likely fuelled by the impending slowdown of the venture funding, and unstable economic conditions and further propelled by an urge to bring down the overall cash burn of the company, according to sources. Layoffs have been prominent in the Indian ed-tech sector as the offline classes are seeing a sudden growth after the Covid-19 has gradually subsided. Vedantu has also laid off more than 600 of its staff in the month of May 2022. Companies like Cars24 have also seen their share of layoffs, when the used car e-commerce unicorn laid off 600 of its employees on May 19, 2022.

Unacademy has laid off again, where around 150 employees were asked to resign in the last 2 days, as per the reports dated June 17, 2022. The laid-off employees belong to the sales and operations verticals and are primarily from Unacademy are from Unacademy Group's core business - Unacademy and PrepLadder. The edtech unicorn justified that it laid off these employees sighting poor performance. Improving efficiency has been declared as the sole aim of the company for becoming profitable. The reason for this batch of layoffs seems different from the earlier layoffs of around 600 employees, who were mostly laid off failing to qualify for the assessments to determine role redundancy and performance. The startup is reportedly trying to assist the laid-off employees with outplacement. It has also offered a two-month salary and additional medical insurance/coverage till the mid of July, as part of the severance package.

Unacademy Suspended Contracts of Educators

After firing over 1K employees in 2022, Unacademy has allegedly suspended the contracts of its NEET and JEE doubt-solving educators for 6 months, as per reports dated August 2, 2022. The Munjal-led company terminated the mentioned contracts on July 31, 2022, and that too with no notice period. Numerous contractors were affected by this, the numbers of which are yet not confirmed by the Moneycontrol report, which reported the same. The educators were terminated by Unacademy for a period of a minimum of 6 months, where Unacademy would neither use their services nor pay them during this period. Unacademy has allegedly stated that it is strategising something new, which would eventually reduce the requirement of doubt-solving platforms.  

Unacademy Shutdowns

Unacademy launched USMLE in February 2022, which was designed to serve as a paid subscription program, a global test preparation platform that will help an MD (Doctor of Medicine) to clear the US medical licensing examination in the US, has been shut down. The platform was winded down because it has failed to achieve the PMF (Profitability Mass Function). The USMLE platform had somewhere between 15-20 employees, who would be likely absorbed by Unacademy.

Unacademy also disclosed that it would be closing some of its business verticals that had failed to find a product-market fit, as per reports dated July 18, 2022.  

Unacademy vs Allen Career Institute

Unacademy had set it up against Allen Career while expanding in Kota. Situations became so tense that Unacademy has to offer police protection for some of its teachers who switched from Allen Career to Unacademy, as per the reports dated June 10, 2022. The Rajesh Maheshwari-founded Allen Career was founded back in 1988, and has enjoyed quite a dominance in the coaching industry that thrives in Kota, Rajasthan.

The issue began when Unacademy started expanding its reach in the offline education space, and in this way, it turned to Allen Career and its teachers and began to hire them against huge compensations. Even the man behind the launch of Allen Career Institute’s Jaipur centre, Ashish Arora also joined Unacademy in February 2022. Gaurav Munjal had previously asked people in Unacademy to hire the best teachers and this plan seemed to have backfired. This has also enraged Allen Career Institute Chairman and Director in Academics Brajesh Maheshwari, who has posted a video warning the teachers from switching to other edtech companies. In this video, Maheshwari also referred to the teachers as 'greedy' and claimed that Allen Career has a workforce of over 11000 employees and that it would not matter much if some of them leave the company. Besides, the teachers who would prefer to join other companies would also be blacklisted from the Allen Group and its partners, and would never be able to join the same group or its partners again in the future.

As per June 14, 2022 reports, Unacademy has listed 30 educators who have joined the company and were previously aligned with Allen Career, in answer to the previous warning from the Allen Director.

The edtech battle between Unacademy and Allen has taken a whole new, dramatic turn. The Rajasthan-based coaching institute has reportedly filed a plea against 20 of its former teachers in Jaipur Commercial court under Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, as per the reports dated July 7, 2022. Allen alleged that the teachers did not serve the 4-month notice period as per the service agreement, thereby not completing their service tenure and breaching the service agreement as a result. It has been reported that Allen filed around 20 pleas in the last week of June 2022, which stated that the sudden resignation of the teachers has led to students abandoning the institute in the middle of the session when crucial examinations are upcoming. The plea also revealed that Allen has also taken disciplinary action against the teachers due to their “illegal and unauthorized absence from the institute”.

Unacademy - Competitors

The main competitors for Unacademy are:

• Khan Academy
• Toppr
• Byju's
• Vedantu
• Bluprint Firefly
• TutorVista

Khan Academy appears to be the top competitor because like Unacademy, they also provide quality educational content for free from which large students are being benefitted. Unacademy substantiates to be exclusive in its educational services and confronts several competitors across the nation.

Unacademy - Future Plans

The total market size of this EdTech startup is expected to reach $287 Billion by 2023, escalating from $160 billion in 2017. Having the largest distribution of free educational videos, and more than 100 Million views every month, the company is working towards creating videos in multiple languages to facilitate students globally, include worthy content and test preparation modules for all possible competitive examinations, and affiliate with great minds to build powerful student network.

Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal has reportedly disclosed Unacademy's plans for an IPO in the next 2 years, as reported on July 11, 2022. This is why Unacademy also wants to turn cash flow positive.    

FAQs

What is the Unacademy learning app?

Based in Bengaluru, Unacademy is one of the largest Indian learning platforms that prepare Class 6 - Class 12 students for their board exams, and competitive exams like IIT-JEE, UPSC, SSC, Banking exams, GATE & ESE, and more.

Who are the founders of Unacademy?

Unacademy has been founded by Gaurav Munjal, Dr. Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh.

Who is the CEO of Unacademy?

Unacademy is currently headed by Founder-CEO Gaurav Munjal.

When is Unacademy founded?

Unacademy is incorporated in 2015 as an Edtech company in Bangalore.

How to become a teacher at Unacademy?

If you are willing to become an Unacademy teacher or educator, then the Unacademy app is quite self-explanatory for an Unacademy educator to apply online. You simply need to make a demo lesson where you would have to explain any concept or topic. After you do that, the review team of Unacademy will go through your lesson. Then they will either approve the demo or ask you to remake it with adequate suggestions for improvement.

How does Unacademy work?

Unacademy is an Edtech platform that has over 10,000 educators who prepare lessons and course materials for the students between Classes 6-12 as well as for the students who are appearing or planning to appear for competitive examinations.    

What is an Unacademy Store?

An Unacademy Store is an experience centre of Unacademy, the first of which has been set up by Unacademy in Delhi NCR. These stores work as experience centres that house numerous devices running Unacademy content, offer people walk-in demos on how Unacademy teaches, offers counseling to students and parents, and run its marketing initiatives.      

What are Unacademy Icons?

Unacademy Icons is an Unacademy learning app initiative to bring in professionals from different fields to share their expertise.

What are the Unacademy Products?

The Unacademy products include - Learner App, Educator App and Parent App.

Who are the prominent Unacademy competitors?

Unacademy competitors include:

• Byju's
• Khan Academy
• Toppr
• Vedantu