Unacademy's CMO Karan Shroff, who was elevated as Partner last year, quits

Karan Shroff, CMO (chief marketing officer) at SoftBank-backed edtech unicorn Unacademy, who was elevated as its Partner in September last year, has quit the company.

In a LinkedIn post on September 1, Shroff said that he will be stepping down from his duties at Unacademy, three years after he joined the edtech unicorn as Vice President of Marketing.

"I would like to thank everyone that helped in this chapter of life and I’m extremely grateful to everyone in the industry for their support in helping make Unacademy the brand it is today," Shroff said in his post.

"On that note I will be moving on from Unacademy and onto the next," Shroff added.

Shroff was elevated as Unacademy's CMO in September 2020. Before Unacademy, Shroff was with Xiaomi as its head of brand marketing in India for a little over four years.

The reason for Shroff to move on from the edtech giant remains unclear. Shroff did not respond to messages and calls by Moneycontrol. The copy will be updated with comments from him, if any.

"We thank Karan immensely for his contributions towards building Unacademy into one of the most Iconic brands of India. He will transition out of his role after six months at Unacademy. We wish him all the very best for his future endeavours,” Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and chief executive officer, Unacademy said in a statement.

Shroff has stepped down from the edtech major ahead of the launch of UnacademyOne, a new product that Unacademy will be launching on September 5 in Bengaluru. While further details of UnacademyOne are awaited, the company's employees are extensively promoting it on social media.

His stepping down also comes at a time when the edtech unicorn is aggressively looking to cut costs and is aiming profitability to prepare for a near-term runway amid a funding crunch.

Moneycontrol had reported exclusively last month, that Unacademy had halved its job guarantee vertical--Relevel's team to about 700 employees amid a global slowdown in the job market.

In July, Unacademy had taken initiatives like paycuts for founders and management, put travel restrictions on employees and stopped complimentary meals and snacks at their offices.

In the same month, the company had said that it will not exercise any more layoffs and would rather relocate redundant employees to other teams.

Employees, including CXOs (top management) will not be provided business class treatment for travel and anyone who wants an upgrade can pay from their own pocket, Munjal, had told employees in an internal note, a copy of which was viewed by Moneycontrol.

Munjal also had asked employees to 'embrace frugality,' as a core value.

In another cost-cutting initiative, Unacademy had suspended contracts of some of its doubt-solving NEET and IIT-JEE educators, Moneycontrol had reported exclusively. Unacademy had told educators that it has made 'strategic changes' to its customised learning solutions and owing to the change it will 'significantly' reduce doubt solving on its platform.