Unacademy Cofounders Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini Set to Exit Amid Offline Pivot

Edtech giant Unacademy will witness a leadership change as cofounder Gaurav Munjal is stepping down from his role as CEO, according to a report published by The Economic Times. He will hand over the reins to board member Sumit Jain. This came amid the company’s broader reset, failed acquisition deal, and increasing focus on its language learning app AirLearn.

Munjal’s fellow cofounder, Roman Saini, is also taking an exit from day-to-day operations. The duo, along with Hemesh Singh who had left the start-up in 2024, had cofounded Unacademy as a YouTube channel about a decade ago.

Besides Munjal and Saini, the edtech’s board includes representatives from SoftBank and General Atlantic as well as Zeta founder Bhavin Turakhia and Udaan cofounder Sujeet Kumar.

The Unacademy board has already been in discussions with Munjal about his potential exit because he was not interested in running an offline coaching centre, the report said. After the exit, the executives are likely to continue holding their shares in the company.

According to Tracxn data, Munjal and Saini each own a 3.4% stake in Unacademy, while the third cofounder, Singh, holds 2.2%. Nexus Venture Partners and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India) each control close to 14%, with SoftBank holding 12% and General Atlantic about 11%.

Unacademy's Reduced Cash Burn

Last month, Munjal announced that around 70% of the edtech company’s offline centres are on the path of becoming profitable by the calendar year 2025.

He claimed that the company has significantly reduced its cash burn in the core business and is likely to bring it down by nearly 50% year-on-year to Rs 200 crore in 2025. He mentioned that this figure was around Rs 1,000 crore three years back. 

“Any EdTech (and we have done this mistake in the past) that goes after multiple acquisitions to grow is bound to fail. It just doesn’t work in this Market. So keeping the “Blinders on” and not worrying about who is acquiring whom and focusing on Profit is the only way to go,” he said.

He even mentioned three goals of the company, including making core business profitable faster, developing tech products like Airlearn and Graphy, and not getting distracted by others in the business.