Unacademy Cofounder Hemesh Singh Quits

SUMMARY

Unacademy’s chief technology officer Hemesh Singh made the announcement of his exit on X

Prior to Unacademy, Singh worked with Munjal as CTO of Flatchat for more than a year

In January, the company appointed CRED’s head of finance Pratik Dalal as chief finance officer of its offline business – Unacademy Centres

Unacademy’s cofounder and chief technology officer Hemesh Singh has decided to take a back seat after being with the edtech startup for more than eight years.

Singh took to social media platform X to announce his transition to an advisory role.

“After almost a decade of building Unacademy with @gauravmunjal and @romansaini, I have decided to move from an executive role to an advisory role,” he said in a post.

“It has been a wonderful ride and I am extremely grateful to have been a part of this journey. We did change the Test Prep Industry for good,” he added.

As per his LinkedIn profile, prior to Unacademy, Singh worked with the company’s chief executive Gaurav Munjal at Flatchat, a mobile-based platform that helps students and bachelors find accommodation and flatmates, for more than a year.

“Hemesh and I started working together 11 years ago when we were building Flatchat. It had been a crazy ride and I have been grateful to have a co-founder like you,” said Munjal.

Singh along with Munjal and Roman Saini founded Unacademy in 2015. The Bengaluru-based company claims to have a network of 91K registered educators (teachers) and over 99 Mn learners.

In January, the company appointed CRED’s head of finance Pratik Dalal as chief finance officer of its offline business – Unacademy Centres.

It is pertinent to note that the extended funding winter, macroeconomic pressures, tightening business margins and absurd unit economics posed several challenges for Indian startups, triggering all-scale business restructuring and retrenchment, shutdowns and even exodus at top leadership roles.

For instance in May, fintech major Paytm’s chief operating officer Bhavesh Gupta resigned from the company. Similarly, logistics unicorn Delhivery’s chief business officer Sandeep Kumar Barasia tendered his resignation, both citing personal reasons.

On the other hand, Karthik Gupta, CFO of Ola Cabs’ parent ANI Technologies also resigned from his position.

Most startups and companies are in the squeeze to innovate and launch new products and services in order to attract larger funds and to save their valuation price. On that note, Unacademy has begun experimenting with language learning and launched an application to learn Spanish, in June.

The company is also planning to add French to the app, while more global and Indian languages are on the list to be included in future.

The Peak XV Partners-backed edtech startup narrowed its consolidated net loss by almost 40% to INR 1,678.1 Cr in the financial year 2022-23 (FY23) from INR 2,847.9 Cr, a year ago, on the back of a sharp reduction in costs.