Unacademy 'not efficient' in finances, will shut some businesses: CEO

Unacademy, valued at $3.44 billion, will restrict business class travel end meals and snacks as complimentary perk at the startup

Unacademy is "not efficient at all" in managing finances and will shut down some businesses to conserve cash before it goes public in two years, said the edtech company’s CEO on Monday.

“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,” said Gaurav Munjal in a Slack post.

The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, valued at $3.44 billion, will restrict business class travel end meals and snacks as complimentary perk at the startup.

“Now all of these changes might make it seem that we are in a bad state. Trust me. We are not. We are in a great state. This is the final frontier that we have to conquer. Profitability. And once we do, it will change the game for us. We are well capitalised but still we want our businesses to be profitable. And it will take Unacademy Group to a different league,” said Munjal.

“We have to do an initial public offering in the next two years. And, we have (to) turn cash flow positive. For that, we must embrace frugality as a core value.”

Unacademy started as a YouTube channel in 2010 and as a learning platform it now has a network of 60,000 registered educators and over 62 million learners.

Unacademy, Vedantu and Lido, all in the edtech space, have each shrunk their workforces in recent months to eliminate redundancies and improve their financial performances.

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.

The company said it discussed and parted ways with the identified people, in accordance with their respective contracts.