Unacademy's buy-everything edtech bet unwinds: CEO exit, 1,300+ layoffs, back online

Unacademy was founded in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Sumit Jain as an online test-prep platform built around celebrity educators, challenging India's offline coaching industry with live online classes at lower prices. During the pandemic-era edtech boom it raised aggressively and made 12 acquisitions — from course-creator tool Graphy to medical-prep app PrepLadder — reaching a $3.4 billion valuation in August 2021 with backing from SoftBank, Facebook, Sequoia, General Atlantic and Peak XV.

The boom reversed faster than the strategy. From 2022 the company laid off more than 1,300 employees across multiple rounds, its COO and CFO departed, most of the acquired businesses were shut or inactive, and no fresh capital arrived after August 2021. Munjal said in December 2023 the company had cut cash burn by 60% with more than four years of runway, but bailout talks with Allen, PhysicsWallah, K12 Techno, Bodhitree and Veranda all fell through.

In May 2025 Munjal stepped down as CEO, co-founder Roman Saini exited active duties, and co-founder Sumit Jain took charge as the company pivoted away from its online test-prep roots toward physical learning centres and a new language app, AirLearn. Then in January 2026, after months of acquisition talks with upGrad collapsed over valuation and deal structure, Unacademy reversed again: it said it would exit company-operated offline centres, convert them to franchises by April, and return to being 'an online first company... like it was when we started in 2015.'

The cost reset was concrete: test-prep burn fell from about ₹450 crore in CY2024 to roughly ₹200 crore; UPSC, NEET PG and CAT became contribution-margin positive; PrepLadder and Graphy were cash-flow positive for the full year; and AirLearn's ARR grew from about $200,000 at the start of 2025 to nearly $3 million by year-end, with around ₹1,100 crore of cash left on the balance sheet.