Unacademy Co-founder Sumit Jain to depart as upGrad acquisition nears
Sumit Jain, who also heads Graphy, the creator-focused SaaS platform owned by Unacademy, was named a co-founder of the edtech firm in 2023 before being elevated to lead its test preparation business in September last year.
Unacademy Co-founder Sumit Jain, who serves as chief executive officer of the company’s test preparation business, is leaving the edtech firm as it moves towards being acquired by upGrad.
“Sumit Jain is moving on for Unacademy. Sumit joined us as co-founder in 2020 and since then helped us build Graphy and make offline profitable,” Unacademy CEO and Co-founder Gaurav Munjal, wrote in a LinkedIn post.
He was elevated to lead test-prep business in September last year. Jain, who leads Graphy, the creator-focused SaaS platform owned by Unacademy, was named a co-founder of the edtech firm in August 2023.
An entrepreneur with multiple startup exits, Jain started building Graphy in 2020 after joining Unacademy through the acquisition of his startup, Opentalk. Before that, he co-founded real estate platform CommonFloor, which was acquired by Quikr for $200 million in 2016.
CommonFloor was also an early backer of Munjal’s now-shuttered startup flat.to, a student accommodation discovery platform.
“What a ride the last 6 years have been! Something I would never trade for anything else,” Jain wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Proud to be a co-founder of a company that has been the first in doing so many things…”
The proposed merger between Unacademy and upGrad has moved into an advanced regulatory phase, with both companies filing an application with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) earlier this month.
The transaction is expected to be structured as a 100% share-swap deal, with Unacademy being acquired at a steep markdown from its 2021 peak valuation of $3.4 billion. Multiple reports peg the current deal value between roughly $218 million and $400 million.
Under the proposed arrangement, Unacademy’s core test-prep business and offline coaching network would become part of upGrad, while language-learning app AirLearn is expected to remain outside the transaction.
The talks had briefly collapsed earlier this year over valuation disagreements before being revived. Since then, both companies appear to have aligned strategically around consolidation in India’s edtech market.
Munjal is likely to continue in a leadership role after the merger, while recent senior-level exits at Unacademy, including that of Jain, suggest internal restructuring ahead of integration.