BENGALURU: Edtech unicorn Unacademy, which recently fired more than 10% of its employees, seems to have sharpened its focus on profitability, as the company’s founders and management will take a pay cut. Also, it will stop offering complimentary snacks and meals across its offices.
In an email to employees, the edtech giant founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal said, “Even though we have 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.” Munjal added, “We must cut all these expenses. We have a strong core business. We must turn profitable asap.”
The SoftBank-backed start-up is also eyeing an IPO in the next two years. “For that we must embrace frugality as a core value,” he said. It has also removed certain privileges such as dedicated drivers for CxOs, and has come up with strong guidelines for travel.
No business class travel for anyone including CxOs and founders/ employees and educators can pay from their own pocket if they want an upgrade. Unacademy will also be shutting down its businesses that have failed to find PMF (product-market fit) like Global Test Prep. “We are well capitalised but still we want our businesses to be profitable,” he added.
The Unacademy group employs close to 5,500 people, and it has started exploring the hybrid-retail model by opening offline centres. Earlier in May, Munjal in a note said the company must survive the winter and keep profitability and free cash flow as the goal.
Founded in 2015, the learning platform at present has over 91,000 educators and over 92 million learners. The Unacademy Group comprises Unacademy, Graphy, Relevel and CodeChef.