Unacademy co-founders may step back, refocus on new edtech venture Airlearn

Unacademy's top brass is preparing for a leadership reshuffle, with co-founders Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini expected to step back from day-to-day operations in the coming two to three months, according to people familiar with the matter. The pair is reportedly engaged in high-level talks with the company's board and key investors to carve out Airlearn—the edtech firm's language learning platform—into an independent entity. The third co-founder, Hemesh Singh, stepped down in June 2024. The trio had originally launched Unacademy nearly a decade ago, starting out as a YouTube channel before evolving into one of India's leading edtech platforms.
Sumit Jain, founder of Graphy and elevated to partner at Unacademy following Hemesh Singh's departure last year, is poised to take charge of the company's offline operations, according to people familiar with the transition. At the same time, Unacademy is in the final stages of appointing new leadership to oversee its core online education business, according to the sources.
An email query to Unacademy remained unanswered till press time.
Jain joined Unacademy in 2020 following the acquisition of his startup Opentalk. In 2023, Unacademy promoted Jain, head of its Graphy division, to the role of partner—a designation internally likened to a late-stage co-founder. Jain co-founded Graphy, a platform that enables educators and content creators to build and sell their own online courses.
Before his tenure at Unacademy, Jain co-founded real estate portal CommonFloor in 2007 and served as its chief executive officer. It was later acquired by classifieds platform Quikr in 2016. Notably, CommonFloor had earlier acquired Flat.to, an accommodation platform founded by Unacademy's Gaurav Munjal, in 2015. Flat.to specialised in helping students and young professionals find housing in new cities.
Munjal and Saini plan to devote their efforts to scaling Airlearn, Unacademy's language learning venture, which positions itself as a competitor to Duolingo, according to the sources. As of April, the app had attracted 70,000 daily active users and nearly 300,000 monthly users, according to a company update shared by Munjal on social media. Of those, 17,500 are paying subscribers, contributing to an annual recurring revenue of $2 million.
The majority of Airlearn's user base hails from the US, UK, and Germany. Over the past year, users have completed more than 20 million lessons on the platform. The app currently offers 13 language courses, with English-to-Spanish, English-to-French, and English-to-Korean emerging as the most in demand.
Unacademy's board includes representatives from global investors SoftBank and General Atlantic, as well as prominent entrepreneurs Bhavin Turakhia of Zeta and Sujeet Kumar of Udaan, alongside co-founders Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini. The edtech company has secured approximately $880 million in total funding, according to data provider Tracxn. In 2021, it raised $440 million in a funding round led by Temasek, with super pro-rata participation from General Atlantic, Tiger Global, and SoftBank Vision Fund, taking the company's valuation to $3.44 billion. The three original co-founders collectively retain a roughly 15 per cent stake in the company.
Unacademy recorded Rs 988.4 crore in total revenue during FY24, a 5.33 per cent decline compared to Rs 1,044 crore in FY23, according to Entrackr. However, the SoftBank-backed firm cut its losses by 62 per cent, reducing them to Rs 631 crore in the fiscal year ending March 2024 from Rs 1,678 crore in FY23.
Munjal recently claimed that Unacademy has reduced its cash burn in the core business from over Rs 1,000 crore annually three years ago to under Rs 200 crore this calendar year. He added that Unacademy has Rs 1,200 crore in the bank and is financially stable. Some of its businesses, like Graphy and PrepLadder, are making money every month.

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The uneven distribution of AI computing power has split the world into two camps: nations that rely on China and those that depend on the United States. The two countries not only control the most data centers but are set to build more than others by far. And they have wielded their tech advantage to exert influence. The Biden and Trump administrations have used trade restrictions to control which countries can buy powerful AI chips, allowing the United States to pick winners. China has used state-backed loans to encourage sales of its companies' networking equipment and data centers. The effects are evident in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In the 2010s, Chinese companies made inroads into the tech infrastructure of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which are key American partners, with official visits and generous financing. The United States sought to use its AI lead to push back. In one deal with the Biden administration, an Emirati company promised to keep out Chinese technology in exchange for access to AI technology from Nvidia and Microsoft. In May, President Trump signed additional deals to give Saudi Arabia and the Emirates even more access to American chips. A similar jostling is taking place in Southeast Asia. Chinese and US companies like Amazon, Alibaba, Nvidia, Google and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, are building data centers in Singapore and Malaysia to deliver services across Asia. Globally, the United States has the lead, with American companies building 63 A.I computing hubs outside the country's borders, compared with 19 by China, according to the Oxford data. All but three of the data centers operated by Chinese firms outside their home country use chips from Nvidia, despite efforts by China to produce competing chips. Chinese firms were able to buy Nvidia chips before US government restrictions. Even US-friendly countries have been left out of the AI race by trade limits. Last year, William Ruto, Kenya's president, visited Washington for a state dinner hosted by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Several months later, Kenya was omitted from a list of countries that had open access to needed semiconductors. That has given China an opening, even though experts consider the country's AI chips to be less advanced. In Africa, policymakers are talking with Huawei, which is developing its own AI chips, about converting existing data centers to include Chinese-made chips, said Koné of Smart Africa. 'Africa will strike a deal with whoever can give access to GPUs,' he said. Alarmed by the concentration of AI power, many countries and regions are trying to close the gap. They are providing access to land and cheaper energy, fast-tracking development permits and using public funds and other resources to acquire chips and construct data centers. 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Such a change will take time and 'doesn't happen overnight,' he said. Still, closing the divide is likely to require help from the United States or China. Cassava, a tech company founded by a Zimbabwean billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa, is scheduled to open one of Africa's most advanced data centers this summer. The plans, three years in the making, culminated in an October meeting in California between Cassava executives and Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, to buy hundreds of his company's chips. Google is also one of Cassava's investors. The data center is part of a $500 million effort to build five such facilities across Africa. Even so, Cassava expects it to address only 10 percent to 20 percent of the region's demand for AI At least 3,000 start-ups have expressed interest in using the computing systems. 'I don't think Africa can afford to outsource this AI sovereignty to others,' said Hardy Pemhiwa, Cassava's chief executive. 'We absolutely have to focus on and ensure that we don't get left behind.'

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3 hours ago

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Delhi University offers short-term language courses for 2025–26 session

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