If the funding winter had had an outsized impact on the edtech sector in India, then Unacademy is in many ways the poster child of this bruising
The startup is shutting the US medical licensing test prep platform, revoking employee benefits and cutting pay for senior management
Is Unacademy straying too far away from its B2C edtech roots with a bigger focus on Relevel, Cohesive and other B2B products?
An exit from the K-12 segment, a trickle of layoffs numbering nearly 1,000 employees, allegations of toxic culture, a developer-centric SaaS experiment, fighting off major competition in offline coaching, winding down US operations in a matter of months, pay cuts for the leadership, revoking perks and employee benefits — the past six months have been the shakiest in Unacademy’s journey.If the funding winter and the global economic slowdown have had an outsized impact on the edtech sector in India, then Unacademy is fast becoming the poster child of this bruising.But marketing, driving traction and retaining users in each of these verticals had resulted in Unacademy over-leveraging some of these product experiments.Since 2020, the Bengaluru-based giant acquired over ten startups including Rheo TV, PrepLadder, Mastree, Spayee, CodeChef, SwifLearn, Kreatryx and TapChief. Many of these acquisitions led to the launch of new products under the Unacademy Group.However, this approach is likely to be a capital-intensive play given that poaching teachers from established players such as Allen Career Institute involve 2x-3x pay hikes with annual income in the range of INR 1 Cr – INR 10 Cr, as reported by Inc42 last month.Investors and analysts we spoke to believe that this is Edtech v1.5, where companies are yet to find a way to shed their traditional roots while also forging ahead through tech. The ‘Edtech 2.0’ moment will come when these two seemingly disparate pieces of the learning pie can seamlessly fit into each other.In many cases, this has resulted in a less-than-clear product-market fit, highlighted by the shutting down of the USMLE test prep product in just five months or its exit from the K-12 space.