Unacademy's Gaurav Munjal confirms M&A rumours on Co's 10th anniversary

Edtech company Unacademy has confirmed it is in talks for potential mergers and acquisitions, with Founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal saying the edtech firm is open to consolidation if it results in a stronger combined entity.

Munjal's comments on Wednesday come amid reports of deal talks with upGrad. In November, Ronnie Screwvala of upGrad—one of India's few surviving edtech firms—had placed a bid to buy SoftBank-backed Unacademy at a valuation between $300 million - $400 million, a steep markdown from its previous valuation of $3.4 billion, YourStory had reported earlier.

Marking Unacademy’s 10th anniversary in a post on social media platform X, Munjal reflected on what he called a “roller coaster” decade for the company—from its origins as a YouTube channel to a peak valuation of $3.5 billion during the pandemic-fuelled boom, followed by a sharp reset.

“Yes, we are in M&A conversations, and yes, if we find a win-win situation where consolidation can lead to a stronger entity, we will go ahead with this,” he said in an X post.

Discussions between Unacademy and upGrad have been underway for several months, with conversations centred on a potential acquisition or merger that could significantly mark down Unacademy’s peak valuation.

Unacademy's consolidation talks are also driven by investor pressure across the edtech sector to prioritise profitability, cash preservation, and scale efficiencies, rather than standalone expansion at high valuation, The Captable had reported earlier.

Founded in 2015, Unacademy built its early growth on free content and organic user acquisition before launching a subscription model in 2019. The company scaled rapidly during the pandemic, reaching nearly one million paid subscribers and raising over $700 million in funding in less than two years.

This rapid expansion was accompanied by aggressive capital deployment and a sharp rise in burn—a strategy that became difficult to sustain once learners returned to offline coaching and price-sensitive competitors entered the market with low-cost offerings.

Looking back on the journey, Munjal acknowledged that the company misread how durable pandemic-led demand would be, even as competitors replicated its content and distribution playbook at a fraction of the price.

Unacademy subsequently cut costs sharply, reducing its annual burn from about Rs 1,400 crore in 2022 to under Rs 175 crore in 2025, while shrinking its team and recalibrating pricing. The company now generates close to Rs 600 crore in annual revenue and has outlined a path to profitability next year, shared Munjal.

These developments also come as the broader sector sees a steep contraction. With several well-funded startups shutting down, downsizing, or pivoting, the market now has only a handful of large, consumer-facing edtech platforms left.

BYJU'S—once the most valuable edtech company globally—is being sold off as part of insolvency proceedings. At the other end of the spectrum, PhysicsWallah has emerged as one of the few survivors by going public, positioning itself as a rare profitable operator in the space.