UNACADEMY

Gaurav Munjal started Unacademy as a YouTube channel in 2010, making educational videos for free. Roman Saini, an IAS officer who had cleared the UPSC exam at 22, joined as an educator.

They formally incorporated in 2015 and pivoted from free YouTube to a paid subscription platform. The timing was perfect — Indian students were desperate for affordable alternatives to expensive coaching centers in cities like Kota and Delhi.

COVID supercharged their growth — when physical coaching centers shut down, millions of students flooded online platforms.

Unacademy sells subscription access to live and recorded classes for competitive exam preparation — UPSC (civil services), IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT, and state-level exams. Subscriptions range from $100-500/year.

They also own Relevel (hiring platform) and acquired PrepLadder (medical exam prep) and CodeChef (competitive programming). Revenue comes primarily from course subscriptions, with some contribution from test series and live events.

Unacademy Plus (subscription), UPSC prep courses, JEE/NEET prep, PrepLadder (medical), CodeChef (programming), Live classes with top educators

Cut costs aggressively and reach profitability. Focus on core exam prep categories rather than spreading into too many verticals.

Build a hybrid online-offline model to compete with both digital and physical coaching. Retain top-performing educators who drive the majority of revenue.

The post-COVID correction hit hard. As physical coaching centers reopened, student interest in online-only learning cooled.

Unacademy had scaled aggressively — hiring thousands of educators, acquiring companies, spending heavily on marketing (including IPL cricket sponsorships) — and the growth did not sustain. They laid off over 1,500 employees in 2022-2023.

Reaching profitability after years of heavy spending is the existential challenge.

SoftBank Vision Fund 2, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Facebook (Meta)