Unacademy Lays-off 250 Employees, Denies Merger Reports To set the record straight, Unacademy will have its best year in terms of growth and profitability. We also have many years of runway. We are building Unacademy for the long run, founder said.
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The edtech start-up Unacademy has laid-off around 250 employees citing ongoing efforts to streamline operations and enhance efficiency.
According to the reports, the lay-off is done across various departments of the start-up including product marketing, and sales. This news comes on the heels of previous rounds of restructuring in 2022 and 2023.
Around 100 positions were cut from core functions like business development and marketing, while the remaining layoffs impacted the sales team.
"As part of our ongoing efforts to streamline operations and enhance business efficiency, we have recently undergone a restructuring exercise. This was necessary keeping in mind the company's goals and vision for the year, as we focus all our efforts on sustainable growth and profitability," the company said in a statement.
"Consequently, some roles have been impacted. While this transition won't be easy, we will be supporting all impacted individuals during this transition," it added.
The day before the announcement of layoffs, Unacademy founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal had commented on a post about start-up failure.
Bhavin Turakhia, founder of Zeta, shared the post in question on the social media platform X saying that "premature founder boredom" is a recipe for startup failure.
The goal of every startup is to become a "boring" business, he opined - but until that happens, a founder cannot afford to get bored with his company.
Turakhia also listed eight metrics to qualify a business as boring. The non-exhaustive list of deliverables include sustainable profitability, sizable and growing market share, playbooks for every process across every function, the right leadership and more.
"Founders fall in love with chaos, ambiguity and uncertainty (because variable rewards release dopamine) and can begin to detach themselves from their core business prematurely before it becomes Boring, resulting in distraction, lack of focus, inefficient use of capital, and inefficient use of the best people," wrote the founder of Zeta on X.
Munjal commented on his post and wrote, "Hits the right chords."
This is the second edtech major which has laid-off huge number of employees, after Byju's. The start-up which ran into financial crisis, had laid-off around 10,000 employees from across the various departments.
There have been reports that Unacademy is going for a possible merger or an outright acquisition. However, the founder has addressed the issue and said "ignore the rumours".
"There is a lot being said about Unacademy currently," Munjal wrote in a post on X.
He further said that the edtech firm have its best year in terms of growth and profitability and many years to run the company.
"To set the record straight, Unacademy will have its best year in terms of growth and profitability. We also have many years of runway. We are building Unacademy for the long run," the founder said.
He said that Byju Raveendran, Founder and Group CEO of Byju's, faced setbacks as he put himself on a pedestal and stopped listening to anyone.
"Byju failed because he didn't listen to anyone. He put himself on a pedestal and stopped listening. Don't do that. Never do that. Don't listen to everyone but have people who can give you blunt feedback," Munjal said.
"You might not always like the feedback, but take the feedback and act on it," he added.
