Unacademy top level churn continues, CFO Subramanian Ramachandran latest to leave

Unacademy was started by second-time entrepreneur Munjal with Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh in 2015. Munjal has run Unacademy as a YouTube channel since 2010.

Unacademy chief financial officer Subramanian Ramachandran is the latest to quit, adding to the string of top level exits at the edtech unicorn, multiple sources told Moneycontrol.

In September this year, the company saw multiple top level exits with its chief operating officer Vivek Sinha and chief of staff Abhyudayay Rana also  departing.

The Morning Context was the first to report the development. Around the same time last year, the company's CMO Karan Shroff also quit the company. 

The CFO’s exit at the test-prep company comes at a time when Unacademy is yet to file its FY23 financials with the MCA. In FY22, the company saw its consolidated losses balloon to Rs 2848 crore, with an increase of 85 percent from Rs 1537 crore in FY21.

Unacademy began as an online platform for students preparing for medical and engineering college entrance examinations and other tests. It was started by second-time entrepreneur Munjal with Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh in 2015. Munjal has run Unacademy as a YouTube channel since 2010.

Since 2022, the company has laid off at least over 1,200 employees in attempts to cut costs and become profitable. Most recently, the company laid off about 30 employees from Graphy, a SaaS (software-as-a-service)-based platform under Unacademy's group companies for creators to grow their audience, monetize their skills, and host live sessions and cohort-based courses.

This comes a year after Unacademy chief Gaurav Munjal pegged a bet on Graphy, when two of Unacademy's growth verticals--job guarantee vertical Relevel and NEET PG learning platform PrepLadder, came under fire.

The Softbank-backed edtech company, last valued at $3.14 billion has raised close to $881 million till date. Peak XV, General Atlantic and Blume Ventures are the backers of the company.