Comedian Samay Raina took a playful dig at his friend and Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal on Instagram on Monday, congratulating him for “selling his company, Unacademy, for just 200 million dollars when he could have sold it earlier at 3.4 billion dollars.” Munjal appeared to take the joke in good humour, responding, “Who needs enemies when you have such friends :)”.
The exchange highlighted the dramatic decline in Unacademy’s valuation after rival upGrad acquired the ed-tech company for slightly more than $200 million. The deal represents a roughly 94% drop from Unacademy’s peak valuation of $3.44 billion in 2021. It is structured entirely as a share-swap transaction, meaning Unacademy shareholders will receive upGrad shares rather than cash.
Unacademy’s journey began with a YouTube channel launched by Munjal in 2010 before the venture developed into a full-fledged education platform in 2015. Munjal founded the company that year with Roman Saini and educator-entrepreneur Hemesh Singh.
Saini, an AIIMS Delhi MBBS graduate who secured All-India Rank 18 in the 2013 Civil Services Examination, eventually left the Indian Administrative Service to help build Unacademy. After completing the first phase of his training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, he was posted as an assistant collector in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh.
At a time when UPSC aspirants were largely dependent on expensive coaching centres in Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar and Old Rajinder Nagar, the availability of structured lessons online for free was a major change. Although Unacademy later introduced paid programmes, its extensive collection of free lessons on YouTube and its website remained popular as the platform expanded into preparation for other competitive examinations.
BACK IN 2015, FREE UPSC COACHING FELT REVOLUTIONARY
The launch of Unacademy by Saini and Munjal in 2015 generated considerable excitement among civil services aspirants.
Saini had completed his MBBS from AIIMS New Delhi at the age of 21 and cleared the Civil Services Examination at 22. His decision to leave the IAS soon after joining and launch a free online learning platform was viewed as a significant move by many UPSC aspirants.
Munjal focused on the business side of the venture, while Hemesh Singh handled technology.
The platform soon attracted several well-known UPSC educators. Supreme Court lawyer Sidharth Arora, Sardar Patel Institute of Public Administration’s Pratik Nayak, Ahmedabad-based educator Mrunal Patel and history and polity teacher Mahipal Singh Rathore were among those associated with Unacademy. While these educators offered paid courses, they also produced lengthy free lessons covering their respective subjects and uploaded them to YouTube.
Teachers associated with major coaching institutes such as Vajiram and Ravi, Vision IAS and Rau’s IAS also joined the platform. The introduction of subscription-based courses disappointed some students who had initially embraced the free model, but free lessons continued to be available through Unacademy’s app and website. Paid programmes offered live classes, structured batches and mentoring from educators.
During the Covid period, Unacademy also expanded beyond conventional classes through its Legends on Unacademy segment, which featured personalities including Virat Kohli, Mary Kom, Shashi Tharoor and Kiran Bedi. The company later collaborated with Arunabh Kumar’s TVF on popular shows such as Kota Factory, Aspirants and its spin-off Sandeep Bhaiya. It also partnered with MTV for the 10-episode music programme Unacademy Unwind.
Saini has described the platform’s early growth as a revolution. He recalled that very few prominent educators were teaching online when Unacademy began uploading videos to YouTube and said that being an online educator was still not widely respected at the time. He said he personally contacted around 200 people within the first month to persuade them to teach online, eventually creating an impact much larger than they had anticipated.
upGrad co-founder and investor Ronnie Screwvala also recalled that Munjal had approached him about six years ago to discuss a possible merger between Unacademy and upGrad.
Screwvala said the discussions began over lunch at Mumbai’s Taj Lands End in 2020, when Munjal approached him and upGrad co-founder and managing director Mayank Kumar about bringing the two companies together.
He remembered Munjal’s strong confidence, while also noting the respect he had for both what he had built at Unacademy and what upGrad had created.
UNACADEMY GAVE TEACHERS BOLLYWOOD STARS-LIKE PAY PACKAGES
Unacademy experienced rapid growth during the Covid lockdowns as schools, colleges and coaching centres were forced to shut.
At the height of the pandemic, Saini said the platform was conducting more than one lakh live classes every month and had close to one million paying subscribers. Its model of using free educational content to attract users to paid programmes soon became common across the test-preparation sector. Platforms including Physics Wallah, Adda247, StudyIQ and Vedantu adopted similar approaches, with Physics Wallah emerging as one of the strongest parallels after growing from Alakh Pandey’s free YouTube lessons into a paid education platform.
Unacademy also helped turn teachers into nationally recognised personalities while significantly increasing their earning potential. UPSC educator Amit Kilhor said the company had fundamentally changed the income levels of educators, describing the kind of compensation it offered as comparable to what top Bollywood stars received.
“Unacademy single-handedly changed the Income Tax Return of educators. No one else could have done it. To pay packages what Grade A Bollywood stars get, to teachers was unheard of and unimaginable. Unacademy walked the path first where others could run later,” Kilhor said.
Munjal said the platform’s free content helped create a generation of celebrity educators and contributed to greater recognition of teachers across India. He said educators were an important part of any economy and that Unacademy’s platform had helped elevate their status. According to him, videos featuring its educators accumulated more than 10 billion views on YouTube.
THE MATHS BEHIND UNACADEMY'S 94% FALL
Unacademy raised $440 million in August 2021 at a valuation of $3.44 billion, marking the company’s peak during the Covid-era ed-tech boom. The upGrad acquisition values the company at around $206 million.
The difference between the two figures amounts to a decline of roughly 94%, making it more technically accurate to describe the transaction as a 94% markdown from Unacademy’s peak valuation rather than a simple discount.
Munjal has openly acknowledged the fall in value. He said that six years after Unacademy became a unicorn, the company had completed its acquisition by upGrad for slightly more than $200 million. Although the company had raised funds at its peak valuation and ultimately sold for a fraction of that amount, he said he remained proud of what the team had accomplished during that period.
A UPSC Civil Services Examination mentor, who previously taught at Unacademy, said his experience might make him biased but argued that Unacademy would remain an important part of the history of India’s ed-tech sector. He recalled that a call from the company in 2020 had also significantly influenced his own career.
Munjal said Unacademy had generated a top line of around Rs 400 crore and had approximately Rs 900 crore in cash reserves, while most of its businesses were either profitable or close to profitability. He also maintained that the transaction was not forced and that the deal with upGrad represented an ambitious path forward.
While the acquisition price reflects the steep decline in Unacademy’s valuation, its influence on online education, free learning content and the growth of India’s educator economy extends beyond the financial value attached to the company.
