Unacademy cut hundreds of roles as its founder stepped back

Unacademy, an Indian online-education startup backed by SoftBank, Peak XV and General Atlantic, became one of India's best-known edtech unicorns during the Covid-19 learning boom. The company hired rapidly across sales, marketing, content and technology to capture a surge in remote-learning demand.

When schools reopened and venture funding tightened, the hiring reversed into restructuring. In July 2024 Unacademy laid off about 250 employees, its third major round in roughly two years after earlier cuts affecting hundreds more. Co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal acknowledged the layoffs publicly, saying the moves were needed to streamline operations and reach sustainable growth.

The deeper signal came later: Munjal and co-founder Roman Saini stepped back from day-to-day operations to focus on AirLearn, a new language-learning venture, while fellow co-founder Sumit Jain took over as CEO. Reports of merger talks with Allen Career Institute at a valuation of about $800 million — down from a peak of $3.4 billion — underlined how far the company's value had fallen.

Cut hundreds of roles in repeated rounds as valuation fell from $3.4bn to ~$800m, while founders stepped back to a new venture.

Unacademy hired for pandemic-era demand that proved temporary, leaving an oversized cost base when normalcy returned.

The company pursued growth and market share without a clear, timely path to profitability.

Multiple funding winters after 2021 made investors focus on unit economics, forcing a sharp reversal of earlier expansion.

Leadership eventually moved to a new project while the core business was still being restructured, weakening organisational focus.

Hiring for a temporary boom without a profitability plan converts growth into restructuring. Scale the team to the sustainable business, not the peak headline.

Unacademy shifted focus to offline learning centres and cost discipline. The founders' move to AirLearn and reported sale talks at a much lower valuation showed the core online model had lost much of its earlier promise.