How Much Were India’s Top Edtech Founders Paid In FY22?

India’s edtech sector has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the last year or so – be it layoffs, shutdowns or the sectoral slowdown. While most of the edtech startups are loss making, it didn’t deter the founders of most of these edtech platforms from giving themselves generous pay hikes in the financial year 2021-22 (FY22).

Together, the founders of the top eight Indian edtech startups, excluding BYJU’S, earned INR 27.5 Cr annually in FY22. The median remuneration of the founders of these startups stood at INR 1.13 Cr per annum during the year, while the average salary hike was 46% compared to FY21.

Alakh Pandey, the cofounder and CEO of PhysicsWallah, drew the highest salary among the founders of the eight edtech startups in FY22. At INR 9.6 Cr, Pandey’s remuneration was almost 35% of the total remuneration drawn by the founders of the eight edtech platforms. 

Pandey’s remuneration rose 30.6% from INR 7.35 Cr in FY21. While his remuneration stood at INR 75 Lakh in FY21, he received an additional INR 6.6 Cr as professional fees from the company during the year.

His remuneration in FY22 was more than what the founders of Unacademy, LEAD, and upGrad took home cumulatively. However, it must be noted that PhysicsWallah is the only profitable edtech unicorn in the country.

Meanwhile, Vamsi Krishna, the founder of Bengaluru-based Vedantu, which bloated its net loss to INR 696.2 Cr in FY22, was the second highest-paid cofounder during the year, with a gross salary of INR 2 Cr. This was an increase of 112% from INR 94 Lakh in FY21. With a remuneration of INR 1.8 Cr in FY22, his cofounder Anand Prakash was third on the list.

Gaurav Munjal of Unacademy, which reported an 85% increase in its consolidated net loss to INR 2,848 Cr in FY22, saw a jump of 7.5% in his salary to INR 1.5 Cr from FY21. 

However, the salaries of some edtech founders also remained unchanged or declined on a year-on-year basis. For instance, Classplus’ cofounders took a 36% pay cut from INR 75 Lakh to INR 48 Lakh in FY22. Meanwhile, the salary of upGrad’s Mayank Kumar remained unchanged at INR 1.25 Cr.

A Sneak Peek Into The Edtech Woes 

While the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic proved to be a blessing in disguise for edtech startups, helping them grow rapidly and raise billions of dollars in funding, the waning of the effects of the pandemic has brought the sector on its knees. 

As normalcy returned to daily life post the pandemic, the reopening of schools and educational institutions resulted in a sharp slowdown in businesses of edtech startups. With platforms struggling to retain existing customers and growth of new users slowing down, the likes of BYJU’S, Unacademy, and Vedantu decided to expand to offline learning. Many of them resorted to poaching educators from rivals at sky-high salaries and this also led to legal disputes.

To add to the woes, the start of the Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation led to the onset of funding winter last year, which is refusing to relent. This funding crunch has forced loss-making edtech startups to focus on attaining profitability. Consequently, they have resorted to layoffs, firing thousands of employees since last year.

The layoffs have also turned the spotlight on the salaries drawn by the cofounders of these edtech platforms. Recently, Unacademy CEO Munjal said that the leadership team of the platform would take up to 25% pay cut.

While FY23 has been the toughest year for Indian edtech startups, the salaries of their founders during the year would only be known once they file their financial statements for the year. For now, edtech decarcorn BYJU’S, which recently saw US-based asset manager BlackRock cut its valuation by nearly 50% to $11.5 Bn, has not even filed its financial statements for FY22.