Edtech Unicorn Unacademy’s CMO And Partner Karan Shroff Steps Down

Edtech platform Unacademy’s chief marketing officer Karan Shroff has quit the startup. In a Linkedin post, Shroff informed that he would be parting ways with Unacademy.

“I will be hanging my boots at Unacademy Over 3 years of memories, tons of awards , A great team that taught me a lot and a journey that I will always cherish,” he wrote.

“I would like to thank everyone that helped in this chapter of life and I’m extremely grateful to everyone in the industry for their support in helping make Unacademy the brand it is today,” he added.

Shroff joined the company in 2019 as the VP of marketing. Since then, he was leading Unacademy’s marketing and advertising efforts.

In September 2021, Unacademy elevated Shroff to the position of partner under its internal ‘Partner’ program for employees. Shroff was announced as the first partner under this program.

At that time, Unacademy Group CEO Gaurav Munjal said that the partner position was similar to being a cofounder of the company and the program was instituted to recognise key leaders within Unacademy.

Unacademy, founded in 2015 by Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini, offers test prep material for IIT-JEE, UPSC, SSC, NEET, GATE, among others. 

In July, Unacademy expanded its ESOP pool size by 19.8% to 286 Mn options from 238.7 Mn options.

However, the startup has been hit by the economic downturn, funding winter, and students moving to offline education as the effect of the pandemic wanes. Unacademy has laid off around 1,125 employees in 2022 so far. 

While Unacademy launched hiring test platform Relevel last year, it has reportedly halved its team to 700 employees over the last two to three months.

Earlier this year, Unacademy also took other cost-cutting measures such as not providing dedicated drivers to CXOs and not allowing business class travel for anyone, including CXOs and founders. 

The startup has also forayed into offline learning centres to expand to hybrid learning mode with the reopening of educational institutions. It is also engaged in a battle with Allen Career Institute for establishing supremacy in the educational hub of Kota.

Unacademy’s net loss widened to INR 1,537.4 Cr in FY21 from INR 258.6 Cr in FY20. However, its total revenue rose by 350% to INR 464 Cr during the year from INR 103 Cr in FY20.