Exclusive: Unacademy COO Jagnoor Singh Quits, Gaurav Munjal & Sumit Jain To Take Charge

Gaurav Munjal-led Unacademy is undergoing a major overhaul. Weeks after its cofounder Hemesh Singh stepped away from the edtech giant, Inc42 has now learnt that the startup’s chief operating officer (COO) for offline centres, Jagnoor Singh, is moving out. 

Singh will be serving his notice period and will be in a transition phase for the next six months, sources said. The edtech unicorn is unlikely to hire a replacement for Singh, and cofounder Gaurav Munjal and newly-elevated cofounder Sumit Jain will oversee the offline business.

“The founders are taking control of the business to attain the company’s goals. The company intends to go public and the business needs to be run more efficiently. Afterall, Unacademy intends to have a sustainable growth and achieve profitability,” one of the sources said. 

Inc42 has learnt that Singh, during his tenure at Unacademy, reported to either Munjal or Jain.

Queries sent to Unacademy remained unanswered till the time of publishing this story.

The development comes a little over a month after Unacademy cofounder and chief technology officer Hemesh Singh announced his decision to take a back seat after being with the startup for more than eight years. 

Unacademy’s partner Sumit Jain replaced Hemesh Singh as the cofounder and also has a seat on the startup’s board. Last year, Jain, who was then the CEO of Graphy, was elevated to a partner role. Munjal had then said that the cofounder role and a partner role are almost similar. 

Hemesh 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.

Unacademy is in the midst of an aggressive cost-cutting exercise currently to turn profitable. Earlier this month, Inc42 reported that the startup fired 250 employees in a fresh restructuring exercise. While 150 employees were from the sales department, who were fired for not being able to meet their “sales targets”, the remaining 100 employees were from various other departments, sources told Inc42 then. 

Earlier in May, Inc42 exclusively reported that the startup’s medical entrance test preparation platform PrepLadder undertook a layoff exercise amid a shift in its sales strategy. The NEET preparation platform laid off around 145 employees, which was almost 25% of its workforce. It was PrepLadder’s third round of layoffs in the past three years.

Besides, K-12 Techno Services has also held talks with Unacademy to acquire the latter. However, the talks are currently in initial stages. 

Peak XV Partners-backed Unacademy 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 in the previous year, on the back of a sharp reduction in costs.

Unacademy Group has raised about $800 Mn in funding till date. Last valued at $3 Bn, the startup counts Tiger Global, Elevation Capital, General Atlantic, and Meta among its backers.