Unacademy to exercise internal migration for redundant employees: Gaurav Munjal

File image: Unacademy founders Roman Saini, Gaurav Munjal and Hemesh Singh

SoftBank-backed edtech unicorn Unacademy will undertake an internal migration exercise for some of the company's 'redundant' employees, its co-founder and chief executive officer Gaurav Munjal told employees in an internal note.

"We will continue to drive efficiency by reducing unnecessary expenses. We have some redundancies in some teams as well, so we will be moving team members from those teams to businesses that are blitzscaling like Unacademy Centers, core engineering, etc," Munjal said in the internal memo, a copy of which was viewed by Moneycontrol.

"But we will not be doing any layoffs moving forward," Munjal added.

To be sure, the company has laid off over 750 employees or about 12 percent of its workforce including educators and contractual employees since the start of 2022.

"I still urge teams to be extremely mindful about expenses and proactively take measures to become more efficient. Every small initiative that we take, adds up," Munjal added.

This is Munjal's second note to employees in two days, asking them to cut costs and be more 'efficient.' In an internal mail on July 11, Munjal had said that the company is taking aggressive cost-cutting initiatives like paycuts for top management and founders, and restrictions on travel. Munjal said that it will also stop complimentary food services at its offices.

Moreover, in May also Munjal had sent out a note warning employees of a potential 'funding winter' and had asked them to work under 'constraints.'

“We are looking at a time where funding will dry up for at least 12-18 months. Some people are predicting that this might last 24 months,” Munjal had said on May 26.

"We have a different Iconic Goal this time. The Goal is of Profitability. The Goal is of generating FCF (free cashflow),” he added.

Slowing demand for online edtech solutions, coupled with a drop in funding has forced edtech companies to lay off thousands of employees, go slow on expansion, reduce advertising and marketing spends.

However, Unacademy is going aggressive with its offline forays. Moneycontrol had reported that the SoftBank-backed firm spent Rs 100 crore to hire 30 employees in Kota.