Exclusive: Unacademy’s New BDA Hires In A Fix Over Mandatory Training & Quick Termination

Edtech giant Unacademy is accused of having changed its hiring terms for several candidates after floating offers letters for the role of business development associates (BDAs) and senior business development associates, multiple candidates told Inc42. 

The candidates were given offer letters as part of the startup’s extensive hiring drive for sales positions in March and April this year, but the terms of employment were changed soon after these initial offers were made.

Inc42 learnt that Unacademy issued revised fresh offer letters to several such candidates on the joining date, and added a seven-day training programme as a final round for screening candidates even after they had seemingly been given the offer letters.

Notably, this clause was absent from their original ‘Letter of Offer’ sent to candidates.

Inc42 has seen both the offer letters (original and the revised), along with the email communication, issued to the candidates who failed to clear the graduation mock call (GMC).

As per the new offer letters, the training programme concluded with the GMC test, and only those candidates who cleared this test would be offered the jobs for the BDA position, and even paid for the “time devoted towards passing the GMC”.

Some candidates Inc42 spoke with said they were puzzled to see on their joining date that they were not yet selected for the jobs and their employment hinged on them passing the GMC test. 

“There were several batches of 30-40 candidates who were earlier selected for BDA, senior BDA positions but were later asked to take a 7-day training (which was paid) and a GMC test thereafter… There was no such clause in the first offer letter. Eventually they [Unacademy] selected only 2-3 candidates from each batch,” a candidate said. 

The candidates added that Unacademy’s HR department was unresponsive when approached with questions about the GMC test.

Unacademy did not respond to questions on the changes in hiring terms for BDAs.

Some candidates also alleged that while many of them were selected for the inside sales vertical, the startup later told them that they would have to do field sales too. 

Many candidates, who were initially selected by Unacademy for the sales roles, were former employees of troubled edtech startup BYJU’S who were laid off earlier this year.

“Even the packages being offered now across the sales positions in edtech are almost 50% lower than what were being offered a year ago. BYJU’S laid off employees en masse, which has flooded the edtech market with job seekers,” according to the founder of a Bengaluru-based HRtech startup.

It is pertinent to note that Unacademy has also faced a fair share of problems amid the ongoing funding winter and the slowdown in the edtech sector over the last couple of years. Earlier this month, Unacademy-owned PrepLadder fired 150 employees as the company rejigged its sales strategy.

It’s not clear why the company has taken this step, but in recent months, Unacademy’s focus has primarily been on the offline learning space, where it competes with PhysicsWallah, Vedantu, BYJU’S-owned Aakash, Allen and other major players. The startup appointed Pratik Dalal as the CFO for the offline business and elevated Jagnoor Singh to the COO of the vertical. It currently has centres in 20+ cities across the country.

Unacademy’s Cost-Cutting Spree 

Amid the slowdown in the edtech sector, Unacademy, like many other edtech startups, laid off employees in multiple restructuring exercises over the last couple of years. As per Inc42’s layoff tracker, the startup downsized its workforce by over 2,000 employees during this period. 

The edtech giant also saw multiple exits of top-level executives over the past year or so. The following are some of those who left the startup:

• Arnab Dutta – Senior Vice President Strategy
• Vivek Sinha – Chief Operating Officer
• Abhyudaya Singh Rana – Chief of Staff, Chief of Compliance Officer
• Subramanian Ramachandran – Chief Financial Officer
• Siddharth Manchanda – General Counsel
• Tina Balachandran – Senior Vice President, Talent and Culture
• Sachin Aggarwal – Head Franchisee Business (Offline Centres)
• Karan Shroff – Partner & Chief Operating Officer
• Ashish Arora – Senior Vice President & National Head Academics

The aforementioned layoffs resulted in an improvement in the bottom line of the SoftBank-backed startup. In FY23, Unacademy’s loss reduced to INR 1,678.1 Cr from INR 2,847.9 Cr in the previous fiscal. Meanwhile, operating revenue rose 26% to INR 907 Cr during the year from INR 719.2 Cr in FY22. 

It must be noted that Unacademy previously poached educators/ trainers from rivals Allen Career Institute and Aakash Education Services, among others, at exorbitant salaries as part of its offline push.

However, in FY23, employee costs dropped 28% to INR 1,281.2 Cr in FY23 from INR 1,771.6 Cr in the previous fiscal year. The startup also brought down the payment to educators by 31% to INR 564.2 Cr during the year from INR 814.2 Cr in FY22.

In December 2023, Unacademy group CEO and cofounder Gaurav Munjal said that the startup’s cashburn reduced by 60% in 2023, and it had enough cash for a runway of more than four years.