‘We are like Netflix for live education’

In an interview with Samreen Ahmad & Bibhu Ranjan Mishra, GAURAV MUNJAL,

co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Unacademy, talks about how the pandemic has speeded up the process of the edu-tech firm to achieve $1.45-billion valuation, and how the Bengaluru-based firm is trying to enter into news exam categories. Edited excerpts:

In six months, your company’s valuation has grown threefold. How did that happen?

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, our valuation in February 2020 was 10 times better than what it was in February 2019. We were the first firm to build a live class subscription product and get the best teachers on board from Delhi and Kota. During the pandemic, after people realised the importance of our product, they came on our platform and started using Unacademy. We have free classes and a subscription product. So, if you have a goal of craving an exam or even learning chess, we get you the best educators who teach you live. We are like Netflix for live education.

So, a lot of your growth’s credit can be given to Covid?

Yes, for speeding up things. If Covid was not there, we would have achieved the same goal 6-7 months later.

What's next for unicorn Unacademy?

We want to launch a K-12 subscription for school students and want to expand in more exam categories and experiment with categories like chess. We are launching a new subscription called competitive programming under the brand Codechef, which will help engineering students learn from the best programmers of the country. We would look at covering more products for preparing for more state and regional level examinations. We are not present in the judicial and law examinations. However, we will launch these two categories soon.

With K-12, you’ll have more competition from players like Byju’s and Vedantu. Any comment?

Our product is significantly better than anything else out there in the market. We take pride in building the best products. After this round, we have a huge responsibility to build great education products for the country and the world.

So, what are the new products that you’re planning to build?

There are several products in the R&D stage, which we will launch in the next two months. We have recently rolled out ‘Graphy’ that allows users to explore stories, ideas, books via video, audio, images. It is seeing an immense traction and we will scale it up further.

Any plans for inorganic expansion?

Not now. We have a lot on our plate. Our 18-month goal is to become cash flow positive.

Do you want to take the product beyond India?

We are not looking at it as of now, but yes, at some point, we may take the product abroad.

Your appetite for funds seems to have gone up. Is preparation for the next round is also underway?

We are adequately funded for the next one-and-half or two years. We are not looking for any more funds.

What kind of revenue brackets are you in now?

We are doing an annual run rate of $120 million right now.