HomeTechnology NewsUnacademy to layoff 10% of its workforce amid funding challenges

Unacademy to layoff 10% of its workforce amid funding challenges

With this latest round of layoffs at the company, its total strength would almost halve from the start of the year, when it had over 6,000 people on its payrolls, indicated people within the company.

By Ritu Singh  November 7, 2022, 10:57:29 PM IST (Published)

Edtech startup Unacademy on Monday laid off almost 350 employees constituting about 10 percent of its total workforce amid the ongoing funding winter for startups, people aware of the development confirmed to CNBC-TV18.

With this latest round of layoffs at the company, its total strength would almost halve from the start of the year, when it had over 6,000 people on its payrolls, indicated people within the company.

The layoffs come just months after Unacademy's CEO and co-founder had assured employees that there would be no more layoffs.

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In an internal communication sent to employees, Munjal said 10 percent of the employees across business groups would be affected, and some verticals would either be scaled or shut down completely. CNBC-TV18 has reviewed the contents of this letter. Below is a copy of this communication sent to employees:

Dear Team Members,

We are no strangers to the harsh economic conditions that everyone is witnessing these days. These are very difficult times for the technology ecosystem. And things are getting worse with each passing day.
Even though we realised this much earlier and took some stringent measures such as reducing our monthly burns, controlling our operational spends, limiting our marketing budgets and identifying other redundancies within the organisation, it was not enough. We need to keep optimising and building efficient systems for leaner and unprecedented times.

I am deeply saddened to share that we will have to say goodbye to some of our extremely talented Unacademy employees. These would be across the Unacademy Group from verticals where we have to take a difficult decision either to scale down or shut.

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Around 10% of Unacademy employees across the group will be impacted because of this, and if you are one of the impacted - you will be receiving a detailed communication within 48 hours from HR.

I want to apologise to everyone sincerely since we made a commitment of no layoffs in the organisation but the market challenges have forced us to reevaluate our decisions. Funding has significantly slowed down and a large portion of our core business has moved offline.

This decision has not been easy and I take complete responsibility. You have contributed immensely to the success of Unacademy and the team will always be indebted to you. There is no easy way to do this and this is definitely not the kind of separation I would have wanted. We will do our best to help everyone in these difficult times. The parting team members will receive the following:

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1. Severance pay equivalent of your notice period and an additional two months

2. Accelerated 1-year vesting period

3. Medical Insurance coverage for an additional one year

4. Dedicated placement and career support

The next few days will be about helping the members who are leaving Unacademy and I would like to request all functions and teams to support this transition.