Gaurav Munjal

Building Unacademy and Airlearn

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@Shpigford Banger Tweet

[Rajan Anandan @RajanAnandan]

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[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@suvirsujan @RonnieScrewvala 🙏

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

Six years ago today, Unacademy became a unicorn. Today, Unacademy has closed its acquisition by UpGrad for just over $200M. We raised at a peak, but sold at a fraction of that. I'm not going to dress these facts up. But I am proud of what this team did between those two numbers.

When @RomanSaini and I started Unacademy with @hemezh and @sumjain, the mission was to democratise education. We didn't end up capturing all the economic value of that mission. But we changed what online education looks like in this country, and the products we built became the template for the entire sector.

Unacademy's free platform created a generation of celebrity educators. Educators are a cornerstone of any economy, and they should be celebrated, and our platform enabled that in our country. Their YouTube videos crossed 10 billion views. That's a milestone I am proud of. Airlearn, in under two years, became one of the top 3 most downloaded language learning apps in the world. We always wanted to build a global consumer product out of India. We did.

With a topline of around 400 crores, most businesses profitable or near-profitable, and 900 crores in the bank, we had every option to keep going independently. Nobody was forcing this. But sometimes, you are drawn towards a path that is more exciting than the one that makes you more money.

After meeting Ronnie over the years, understanding what he's built with UpGrad in higher education, and getting inspired by his vision for education in India (and more), I always walked away with the thought that it would be fantastic to work with him. And because there was no pressure of running out of money, we could take the time to actually think it through. The more we did, the clearer it got: this is a better path for the ecosystem, not just for us.

I'm looking forward to the path ahead, and I am very sure that our shareholders will create immense value from the merger hereon. My heartfelt thanks to every employee who stayed when it would have been easier to leave. To everyone who worked with us in the past. To our educators. To our investors. To my co-founders. We did four ESOP buybacks that created real value for our employees, even though the founders and investors didn't create much for themselves in the process.

A special note to a few people without whom I would have personally given up when things got really hard: Shailendra Singh, Deepinder Goyal, Bhavin Turakhia, Sujeet Kumar, Bhavish Aggarwal, Aakrit Vaish, Mukul Arora, Shantanu Rastogi and Karthik Reddy.

Also a huge shoutout to family and friends. And most importantly, my wife Reema, and my co-founder and close friend of almost 20 years, Roman. Thanks for sticking around during my lowest and my cockiest moments. You two make me better 🌞

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@rvivek Done :)

[Sumit Jain @sumjain]

My journey with @gauravmunjal started long before Unacademy. At CommonFloor, I acquired his company, Flatchat. One day, Gaurav came to me with the idea of Unacademy. I wanted him to stay and continue building with us, but the idea of democratizing education was so powerful, and its potential impact so meaningful, that I couldn’t say no. Instead, I wrote the first angel cheque.

Years later, I joined the journey myself: first by building Graphy, and eventually by leading the entire Test Prep business.

One of my fondest memories is travelling in an Unacademy T-shirt. At airports, CISF personnel would recognise Unacademy just from the Glyph on my T-shirt. They would come up to me and say that they had studied on Unacademy and that it had helped them crack their exams.

Somehow, those conversations made long flights feel shorter and warmer. That was the power of the brand we had built and the impact it had created.

We built products that were loved by users and competitors alike. We probably helped our competitors hire fewer product managers because of us. :)

Over the years, we did four ESOP buybacks, including our most recent ₹50 crore buyback just a few months ago. We always tried to do right by our people. Even during layoffs, some of the hardest decisions we ever had to make, we went above and beyond when it came to severance and other benefits.

Unacademy’s Free Platform created a generation of celebrity educators, while our YouTube videos have been watched over 10 billion times. Our Live Courses Subscription model went on to become the industry norm. Graphy today empowers creators across the world and does over ₹400 crore in Annual GMV, while PrepLadder has become the go-to platform for medical students.

A heartfelt thank you to all our current team members who stood by us and didn��t abandon the ship through the toughest times; to everyone who has been part of our journey over the years; to our incredible educators; to my co-founders; and to our investors who believed in us and backed us along the way.

When I look back at where it all started, the simple idea of democratizing education, and the millions of lives we touched along the way, I think we can say one thing with a smile:

We did crack it. 🙂

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@bhavintu 🙏

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

Who needs enemies when you have such friends :)

[Desh ke Kalesh @deshkekaleshh]

Samay Raina roasted unacademy founder

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@bhash 🙏

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@shankmurali ❤️

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@sugandhanisa 🙏

[Roman Saini @RomanSaini]

Unacademy is getting acquired by upGrad today. It has been one helluva journey since that stroll in LBSNAA when I was on the phone with @gauravmunjal and decided to quit IAS and build Unacademy.

At one point during peak Covid, there were more than 100,000 live classes happening on Unacademy every month, with almost 1M paid subscribers. I remember once I was taking a flight and a CISF officer looked at me curiously and recognised me. He thanked me because he could study online and prepare for his govt. exam while still on the job, and because going to an offline coaching centre was not an option for him. Unacademy has made countless such success stories possible.

When we started posting videos on YouTube, very few smart people were teaching online. Being an educator was still looked down upon. I remember that within the first month itself I must have called 200 people to teach online. This led to a revolution bigger than we had imagined. Suddenly we were doing millions of views, which eventually became billions. There are only very few top educators in India today who haven't at some point taught on Unacademy. The impact that Unacademy has created for the ecosystem is immense.

The journey wasn't easy. It never is. I remember once being up all night making videos just because our views were down and I didn't want a month where we were not growing. Another time, Gaurav and I flew to China to meet an investor who didn't even show up for the meeting. Whether it's the sleepless nights, or the rejections, or the constant firefighting during good times and bad, it is a journey to remember.

Very few people get the opportunity to create the kind of impact that we created. And I am proud of the impact we have created through Unacademy.

And now, as a part of upGrad, we are looking forward to creating an even bigger dent in the universe with @RonnieScrewvala.

Thanks to my friends and family for always being there for me. Without you it would not have been possible. Especially to my wife @SprihaChoubey and to my co-founder and friend Gaurav, whose LBSNAA phone call helped us create the entire online education category in India.

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@deepigoyal 🙏❤️

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@RonnieScrewvala 🙏❤️

[Ronnie Screwvala @RonnieScrewvala]

Some journeys take a long time to come full circle. This one started in 2020,  over lunch at Taj Lands End in Mumbai, when Gaurav reached out to Mayank and me about Unacademy and upGrad coming together.
What stood out was Gaurav’s incredible level of self-confidence, but at the same time, the respect he had for what he had built and what upGrad had built. He came in proposing he could run the whole combined entity 😊.   Obviously, that wasn’t something we had in mind at that stage, but the very fact that he could approach us, speak openly, share his mind and his ambitions said a lot about the quality and level of what Unacademy was building. That stayed with me.
In between, we had caught up a couple of times.  On a lighter note,  Gaurav came about 45 minutes late to these meets , but with a swagger, a really nice swagger. At my stage and age, it didn’t feel like I was being stood up or insulted. 
But at the end of the day, relationships are built on mutual respect,  trust and  liking. And sometimes those relationships create the possibility of building something really Big. 
Then in late July 2025  Gaurav  reached out and shared where his mind was, and the crossroads at which Unacademy found itself, & what stood out again was the very transparent way in which he laid everything out and what needed to get done.

Cut to today. We’re happy to close the Acquisiton and coming together of Unacademy and upGrad. 

I think there are some incredible strengths that Unacademy brings to what upGrad doesn’t have: the savviness, the product & tech first thinking,  the ability to look at a completely different target audience, the brand and the resilience that the team that created this.    What the team has been able to do with consumers, clients and students, and the ability to change people’s lives, is what I keep saying we are all here for. And I think that is what Unacademy stands for.
I am also very excited about Airlearn. To see a product coming out of India gaining traction globally is a great example of what is possible when the thinking, product and ambition are not limited by geography. India to the world is a very real opportunity, and Airlearn is already showing us a glimpse of it.

So this coming together is a strong message about collaboration, especially in such a high-impact, high-outcome segment like learning and looking at people’s futures. Education and learning are perhaps a little passé as words today. The bigger question is whether we are going to be a success factor for India’s workforce, India’s ambition and more. 
I have a great sense of pride in having the Unacademy team come together as one. I think there are going to be some incredible synergies and some incredibly diabolically different, but very radically fresh and innovative thoughts brought to the table.
A high point. I am a firm believer that Serendipity plays a big role in almost everything you. 
You just need to be in multiple places at multiple times to be in the Right Place at the Right Time on a few of those occasions. 🙏

[Roman Saini @RomanSaini]

Just finished watching the entire podcast of @dougleone with David Senra in one sitting.

What an iconic guy. One of the highest signal-to-noise ratio podcasts I've seen in a long time. Gaurav and I had the privilege to meet him a few years ago in the Sequoia office in San Francisco, where he gave us some brutal but needed feedback on Unacademy.

Key takeaways from the podcast would be to never rest on the past laurels, always back the Outliers, never be content in life, keep hustling, reinventing oneself to stay relevant at all times and begin with trust.

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@Uttupaaji Haha yeah.

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

I cannot ever go back to a world without AI Agents. It’s like we are living in a world with Magic.

Told Grok Bot to go through my Calendar for the last ten years, each meeting. And then each person whom I met add them on a database in Notion with their LinkedIn Profiles and what they are up to currently. With proper tags etc.

It’s been 2.5 hours since the Agent is working without any break. So far it has done the task for last three years and added about 1000 entries to the database.

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@architchauhann Oops.

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@DrDoubtPhD Aren’t we already

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

@siddharth_iitm I have not opened my MacBook since I got Grok Bot :)