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High-Profile Exits At Unacademy Continue

It’s the second senior exit at the edtech startup in recent months….reports Asian Lite News

High-profile exits at Gaurav Munjal-run edtech company Unacademy continue and now, its chief financial officer (CFO) Subramanian Ramachandran has quit, according to reports.

It’s the second senior exit at the edtech startup in recent months.

“Ramachandran has put down his papers and is currently serving his notice period,” said a report by The Morning Context report, citing sources.

In August, Unacademy’s chief operating officer Vivek Sinha had resigned.

The company was yet to comment on the latest development, as the online edtech sector in the country is reeling under massive slowdown since last year.

In November last year, Unacademy laid off around 350 employees, approximately 10 per cent of its workforce.

This was followed by another round of layoffs in March this year, which led to a further reduction of about 12 per cent or more than 350 employees.

Munjal announced to reduce the size of the team by 12 per cent to “meet the goals we are chasing in the current realities we face”.

“The global economy is enduring a recession, funding is scarce and running a profitable business is key. We have to adapt to these changes, build and operate in a much leaner manner so we can truly create value for our users and shareholders,” Munjal said.

Late last month, Unacademy-owned software-as-a-service platform Graphy laid off about 20-30 per cent of its workforce, or nearly 50 employees, as part of a restructuring exercise.

A spokesperson from Graphy had said that “we are committed to growth and have a strong belief in our mission to empower creators and educators to scale their online brands and business by launching their online courses and selling them through our platform.”

“We continue to make significant strides in achieving our goals, and our commitment to our mission is unwavering,” it added.

According to the company, the job cuts happened on the basis of performance and had nothing to do with layoffs or revenue growth plans.

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India News

Edtech major Unacademy cuts 10% jobs

Gaurav Munjal.

Funding has significantly slowed down and a large portion of Unacademy’s core business has moved offline..reports Asian Lite News

Edtech major Unacademy on Monday laid off 10 per cent of its workforce or nearly 350 employees, as funding winter deepens for the Indian startup ecosystem.

In an internal email to employees, Gaurav Munjal, CEO and Co-founder of the company, said that around 10 per cent of its employees across the group will be impacted, “and if you are one of the impacted — you will be receiving a detailed communication within 48 hours from HR”.

“Things are getting worse with each passing day. Even though we realised this much earlier and took some stringent measures such as reducing our monthly burns, controlling our operational spends, limiting our marketing budgets and identifying other redundancies within the organisation, it was not enough,” said the Unacademy CEO.

“I am deeply saddened to share that we will have to say goodbye to some of our extremely talented Unacademy employees. These would be across the Unacademy Group from verticals where we have to take a difficult decision either to scale down or shut,” Munjal said.

“I want to apologise to everyone sincerely since we made a commitment of no layoffs in the organisation but the market challenges have forced us to reevaluate our decisions,” he added.

Funding has significantly slowed down and a large portion of Unacademy’s core business has moved offline.

“This decision has not been easy and I take complete responsibility. You have contributed immensely to the success of Unacademy and the team will always be indebted to you. There is no easy way to do this and this is definitely not the kind of separation I would have wanted,” said Munjal.

The company is giving severance pay equivalent to the notice period and an additional two months; accelerated 1 year vesting period; medical Insurance coverage for additional one year and dedicated placement and career support.

The layoffs came after the SoftBank-backed company reported a two-fold jump in its FY22 losses at Rs 2,848 crore for the year.

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Business

Unacademy tightens its belt

Nearly 150 employees (2.6 per cent) from Unacademy’s PrepLadder team were laid off….reports Asian Lite News

As the funding winter hit edtech startups and unicorns in India, Unacademy founders and management are taking pay cuts and employees will not get complimentary meals and snacks across its offices, the company’s Founder Gaurav Munjal has told employees.

In an internal email, Munjal said that even though the company has more than Rs 2,800 crore in the bank, “we are not efficient at all”.

“We spend crores on travel for employees and educators. Sometimes it’s needed, sometimes it’s not.

“There are a lot of unnecessary expenses that we do. We must cut all these expenses. We have a strong core business. We must turn profitable asap,” the email read.

“We will be shutting down certain businesses that have failed to find the product market fit (PMF) like the Global Test Prep,” he told the employees.

Unacademy last month said that a small fraction of its workforce (2.6 per cent) has been asked to go as part of a performance improvement programme (PIP).

Nearly 150 employees (2.6 per cent) from Unacademy’s PrepLadder team were laid off.

In the email, Munjal said that they have to do an initial public offering (IPO) in the next two years.

“And, we have (to) turn cash flow positive. For that, we must embrace frugality as a core value,” he added.

In April, Unacademy laid off nearly 600 employees, contractual workers and educators, about 10 per cent of its 6,000-strong workforce across the group.

As the tech and startup sector gets hammered by economic meltdown, more that 22,000 workers in the sector have lost jobs in 2022, along with more than 12,000 in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Startups, especially the ones who benefited from a pandemic boom, are feeling the pressure as valuations, particularly at the late stage, have started to dip, according to Crunchbase.

Startups now say it is much more difficult to raise new funding in this gloomy environment.

Globally, companies like Netflix, financial services company Robinhood and several crypto platforms have tripped their workforce.

In the world of crypto that has been battered by the economic headwinds, crypto exchanges and firms including Coinbase, Gemini, crypto.com, Vauld, Bybit, Bitpanda and others announced to downsize their workforce.

Pokemon GO game developer Niantic has asked eight per cent of its workforce to leave the company, which is said to be around 85-90 people.

Elon Musk-run Tesla has cut 10 per cent of its salaried workforce.

As startups in India keep firing their staff to navigate through the ‘funding winter’, the country may see more than 60,000 job losses in 2022 alone, led by edtech and e-commerce platforms.

Nearly 12,000 startup employees have been shown the door to date, let by companies like Ola, Blinkit, BYJU’s (White Hat Jr, Toppr), Unacademy, Vedantu, Cars24, Mobile Premier League (MPL), Lido Learning, Mfine, Trell, farEye, Furlanco and more.

Industry experts say that at least 50,000 more startup employees are likely to be thrown out this year alone in the name of “restructuring and cost management” while certain startups keep receiving millions in fundings.

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